


He's A Waterfall

by glowstojevskij



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Bad Parenting, Famous Louis, Fluff, Football Player Louis, Football Player Niall, Football | Soccer, Friends to Lovers, Growing Up Together, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Introspection, Journalist Harry, M/M, Non-Famous Harry, famous/non-famous, some mild pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-07-27 08:07:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 66,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7610275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glowstojevskij/pseuds/glowstojevskij
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Football is everything to Louis, thirteen years old from the nastiest suburbs of Manchester. Mostly, it's just a dream.<br/>That's until he meets Harry.</p><p>-</p><p>Or, the story of how Louis became one of the greatest footballers in the world that Harry was there to narrate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Manchester 1998

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The premise is that football is everything to Louis, but to me as well. Or well, maybe not that drastic, but you know. Surely though football Louis is something very important and I wanted to write him in some kind of different atmosphere, where the game is just a frame, but also a life jacket, in a way.  
> The story starts in the late 90s but covers around 15 years of friendships and relationships and social classes that make all the difference until they don't anymore.  
> For the sake of the trigger warning I should mention there are bits of bad parenting and slight homophobia.  
> Also there is an excessive amount of mentions of sparse literature things, indie rock, The Stone Roses and old football legends. Just saying.  
> A huge thank you [hollytabatha](http://archiveofourown.org/users/hollytabatha) for beta-reading the story ❤

_Manchester, 27 th of December 1998_

 

The telephone rings when Louis has already climbed half of the last staircase leading to the flat. He challenges his too short legs and hops on the steps, two at once, as if having to go up the seven sets of stairs of that box of apartments that his brain still struggles to call _home_ isn’t an already hard enough task for his lungs to endure.

But Louis has got this. He’s always in a good shape, see, because besides not being able to recollect a time when the unstable lift of the flat complex, (one of those shoddy cement blocks that made the English construction industry’s fortune and the misery of the urban aesthetic) wasn’t out of order, he never has enough coins in his pockets. That’s why instead of getting the _Met_ into town, he has to chase it from his neighbourhood to his work place, and then back, no matter if the sun is shining or it is heavily pouring rain.

Sometimes overtaking the tram is all it takes for him to feel effortlessly happy, running swift as the wind on the freshly refurbished asphalt despite his old desert boots falling to pieces.

He likes to pretend he does it not just because he is a broke and miserable thirteen year old, born and raised in the most rickety suburbs of Manchester, but because if you chase the tram among the roads of the town, like Puskàs, the greatest footballer of all time (according to Louis), then it’s easier to chase and leave your opponents behind on the football pitch.

When Louis runs, wind ruffling his hair, and he closes his eyes, he can dream about all the things he can’t have, and all the things he can’t and will never be.

It’s kind of an excruciating and sad paradox though, because a dreamer, _that_ he is still allowed to be, but dreams don’t pay the bills nor fill your stomach when you’re starving.

He jumps the last four steps at breakneck speed, finally reaching their floor. He finds the front door obviously wide open, because even if a gang of robbers decided it was worth it, to climb all the stairs of this paltry building, they would be left empty-handed, since there’s absolutely nothing valuable enough to be stolen in this decrepit excuse for a two-room flat.

He would still like it, though, if his mother remembered to close it, the door, every now and then. At least to maintain a semblance that they someway still care about the concept of home and family and _hearth_.

But then he has to laugh bitterly at the thought, confronted with the harsh reality that he's lucky enough if his mother remembers to come back to the right house after wandering downtown during her rogue nights, let alone make the effort to lock the door.

And after all, it’s fine as it is. Really.

He jumps the remaining steps and he enters the house, leaving his backpack on the dusty floor, in the narrow hall, rushing to pick up the call in time.

It’s very strange, hearing the telephone ring. It’s kind of news, to be honest, because since the telephone company restricted the outgoing calls due to the fact they haven’t paid a bill in months, Louis had almost forgotten they own a telephone, too. It makes him realise how sad it is, to feel that sound so foreign, because it means nobody ever calls them.

He passes his mother, who is sloppily sprawled on the ratty couch, one arm dangling forlorn, mouth gaping and head reclined on the armrest, asleep since— Louis doesn’t even want to know _when_. He sighs, as he takes up the receiver of that obsolete phone, ‘fetched _’_ somewhere, years ago, by Aleks, even though Louis is almost completely sure he stole it from the bazaar owned by the old Tom Polyphemus.

“Hello,” he speaks in the receiver, voice panting thanks to that last sprint he attempted, pretending he was the Jesse Owens of a different era when it actually was a bit reckless of him—despite running after the tram and everything— because it's no good for his asthma.

“Lou,” a broken voice calls, and Louis is about to drop the telephone from the shock, as he registers the sound of that single word, so comfortingly familiar yet so wrongly affectionate.

See, Louis has a big problem with voices. His problem is that if you haven’t heard a voice for too long, you end up forgetting about it, and the more you start to think of that voice, the more you play it in your head, play words from somebody you haven’t seen in months, the more you twist it, the more you distort it to your own pleasing. And then you start to question yourself, whether it truly was like that, or whether the cadence was a bit different, the accent stronger and more pronounced, whether the owner of that voice would have actually really said those words you keep making up in your head.

_(Louis, I love you. I’m coming back. You are not alone.)_

The problem with voices, is that they are just voices. And just a voice is nothing when you need its owner just right there by your side.

“No,” spits out Louis snappily, feeling the anger harboured for months finally crackle in his stomach like a lit fire. “No, no, no.”

“Louis, please,” sighs dramatically his sister through the speaker of the phone, and her voice comes off as broken and distant, slightly different from what Louis remembered. And that voice has him suddenly regretting hurrying breathlessly just to answer _her_.

If only Louis had lingered two minutes more in the yard, to exchange two words with Mrs. Smith from the third floor, he almost surely would have missed the call. And now he wouldn’t be standing there, stupidly, with that lump which had grown bigger and bigger, bolstered with the pain and the sufferance of weeks, aggressively coming back unwanted and unannounced in his throat.

It hurts. Everything hurts.

“ _Please?”_  he retorts angrily after a deep exhale, aimed at diluting his desperate rage. He tries his best not to yell, because he realises the front door is still open and the last thing he wants is to draw the attention of the whole floor on them, for the umpteenth time yet.

“How come you're deeming us worthy of a call only now? I would love to know, Julie. What drove you to think you should spare a call to your family after you disappeared for all these months without a word? Even a bloody note would have done it, you know. A bloody note, to say listen Louis, I’m going and I’m never coming back, good luck with the fucking mess in which I’m leaving you, as the responsible sister I am!”

It's not what he wanted, yet his own words take him back to that cold morning he's trying to erase from memory. That cold Friday morning, just some months ago, when he woke up late because nobody was there to command he went to school, that teachers are surely not waiting for him to start classes.

When he came back home for lunch, after getting a C in his Maths test, and not only nobody was there to scold him, but he also found an empty room, the table not set and no lunch for him to eat.

When he walked nervously, with a bad presentiment in his guts, to the tailors’ shop where Julie used to work, to see if she had taken some more shifts that day. When Mrs. Roxton, the lady who owns the place, told him she hadn’t seen her since the day before and if pretty please he could tell her that next time she better notices in time when she decides not to show up, otherwise she would have to fire her.

When he came back home, once again, and started putting together the pieces of the puzzle, noticing that Julie’s clothes drawer was almost empty, that her toothbrush was not in the chipped blue ceramic glass on the sink anymore. Noticing that their mother’s few jewels, that they never had the fortitude to sell away, not even in the darkest moments (and God knows they had a lot of those), were missing as well.

“What do you need, Julie? Other pieces of jewellery? Or money? You should know better than me that we don’t have any,” attacks Louis resentfully, because he is angry and upset and there surely is justification to his anger, somewhere between the moment she left and this ridiculous call. Did she all of a sudden remember of his existence, after she hasn’t bothered calling for eons, not even to let him know where she was, if she was fine, if she was _alive_? Letting him deal with the mess that is their family and consume himself with worry and despair?

“You used to call me Juls,” she sighs almost mournfully, her words coming out feeble, as if there was a need of a reminder that she’s far, far away, impossibly out of Louis’ reach. The tone makes Louis feel guilty though, for some obscure reason. And then that makes him feel mad at himself, because why should he be the one to feel guilty? Was he the one to leave the family without a word to flee God knows where?

“And you used to care about us. About _me,”_ reproaches Louis sharply, rolling his eyes. Although there’s no point in doing that, he knows, since Julie can’t even see him. “Where are you, by the way?”

They have never shared the ideal siblings’ relationship, him and Juls. Surely having Rebecca as a mother didn’t help a lot to the cause, especially in the last few years, but given how easily Julie left, Louis is not sure anymore there’s ever been genuine love for him under the necessity to stick together.

Once maybe. Years ago, when Rebecca was still herself and actually capable of looking after her own two children like a real _mother_ , when their father was still there, before deciding he was better than all of them and leave to fuck off God knows where. Maybe back then, they loved each other like brother and sister.

After Rebecca’s first breakdowns, they just had to roll up their sleeves and form a united front to cope with their own mother. Young as they were they had to prevent her from getting wasted, from taking every sort of harmful substance, and try to make a living, sustain their small family, always double-check before spending some money and keep their heads above water, as much as they could.

And Louis can see now how the bond they shared wasn’t full of love and care, but more of the same tiredness towards the life they were forced into.

It had always been the both of them against the rest. Louis, in between school and the job as a kitchen hand in a small Italian restaurant in Clayton, and Juls, split between the job at the tailor shop and the night shifts as a waitress at the pub just two blocks away from their building. It was them, Louis and Julie, and everything was okay. Well, sort of okay, because there were plenty difficult and straining times. But they tried to make it work, to fight, until the day Juls decided that she had enough, that it was too much. And from then on, it was Louis alone. And Louis is just a kid.

“I’m in Berlin. And I know Louis, I know. I'm sorry." Louis can sense she’s about to burst into tears, and he just feels like snorting at how unfair and messy this whole situation is. Show him the responsible sister who leaves everything she has behind, all of a sudden, to go to Berlin, a city that, for what he knows, doesn’t have any particular meaning to her. "I haven’t spent a day without feeling guilty, it wasn’t easy leaving you, I still care so much about you. I promise,” she sobs.

But it should be Louis, the one to burst into tears. It should be Louis, forced to drop out of school when he wasn’t even thirteen years old to support himself, just because his mother and his sister are too irresponsible and selfish to care about somebody else. It should be Louis the one in tears, as he questions his sister’s tone of voice, as he tries to understand what he should make of her promises, as he can’t decide if her words are genuine or not, if there’s an ulterior motive behind them.

Because when you deal with people like him, like _them,_ people from the filthiest suburbs of the town, embanked on the river Irk, stagnant and murky just like their lives, you should always expect an ulterior motive, that is what life taught him.

“In Berlin,” exhales Louis, flat. Flat and weak, and the tiniest bit incredulous, because really,he doesn’t know what to do with this piece of information, doesn’t even have the strength to get angry anymore, every emotion drained from him, a painful hole in his heart.

“Listen Lou, I know I wasn’t fair, to you especially. But I couldn’t keep going, not after putting up with her my whole life. I was so tired, Lou, I was—“

“You _whole life_?" Cuts in Louis disbelievingly, without sparing too much attention to her stammering. “You’re nineteen, for Christ’s sake!” In his huffy voice, he hopes he has at least managed to convey all the grudge and the pain of the months that have them so far apart, and not only geographically. “What should I say then?”

What should Louis say, poor thirteen year old boy from Manchester, with a passion for Manchester United and old vinyls (admittedly, that one got a bit out of his hands), with so many dreams in his head, impossibly out of reach, occluded by the awareness that people like him have their destiny already all planned and written.

“I’ll be back to get you, Louis, I promise. Joe said that we could—“ she mumbles, hesitant and nervous, words mixing up in the hurry of putting them out.

Sure. Of bloody course. Louis curls his mouth into a disgusted grimace. “Ha. Joe.” 

How could he think this artfully planned, miserable stunt could be anyone idea’s but work of the twisted mind of that jailbird and reject of his sister’s boyfriend? He has no intention of listening to what Joe thinks they could or could not do. Ever since Julie met him he’s always been ready to put her on the spot, trick her into doing things she would never think of. She can't see how he’s just a petty manipulator, who hasn’t thought twice before interfering in her relationship with Louis, making her feel like a fool for taking care of him. And now he's finally managed to take her away from him. He’s always been ready to jump on the occasion, taking advantage of Julie’s naïveté and blind faith. Louis has always disliked him, and this is just one more reason to reinforce his feelings.

“Good old Joe. How is he doing? I hope well. I hope he’s having a lot of fun with our money,” he hisses, gritting his teeth.

“Listen Lou,” sighs his sister, sounding tired and resigned. “I’m not in a good place right now. I won’t come back, though. I can’t do that. I’m so sorry.”

She’s good at this game, Louis has to admit it. She’s so good at acting all innocent and pious, at avoiding responsibilities, at bending her tone in a remorseful one, in a compassionate and patronising one, that Louis, eager as he is to cling to every shred of hope, almost falls for it.

“Nobody wants you here, anyway. We’ll manage just fine. Me and Rebecc—me and mum,” he says roughly, and as the words come out he almost believes in them, stubborn and proud as he is. He barely managed, in the past few months, he will keep barely managing for as long as he can, if that means not giving Juls the satisfaction of knowing he’s finished without her.

“ _Lou.”_

Louis snorts, making sure he’s well hearable through the conceited noises from the busy street Juls must be speaking from. “Don’t ‘ _Lou’_ me!” is all he says, eyes solid and fixated on the white wall in front of him where the phone is hung.

She doesn’t have the right to ask, to expect anything. Not anymore. She made her choice, right? She was happy with that choice. She made clear she was firm on that choice, when she didn’t call for all these months.

And Louis maybe was hoping things stayed like that, so he could keep on hating her silently, from afar, without knowing what she was up to, imagining the worst scenarios he was capable of, instead of hearing her voice and being hit by how much he actually misses her. By how much sometimes he needs some bigger shoulders to help him bear the weight of this messed up life.

“I can’t believe you’re turning up like this on me,” she sighs disappointed, broken and resigned. She’s a mess. Louis doesn’t know where she finds the nerve, as if his words were unjustified, as if his sadness were just a teenage whim, not valid, unreasonable.

“Wow," he snorts. "You’re wasting money you don’t have on this call, Julie. I don’t know where you want to get, but I’m gonna go now. I’m gonna—I’m gonna play footie,” he snaps irately, clenching his fingers tighter around the receiver and hitting the wall with a fist of his free hand, knuckles going white and then red.

“Fine. Did she buy you the football you asked for Christmas then?” She whispers, a sweet voice in which Louis forces himself to catch a shade of guile at all costs, so he can avoid thinking that maybe Juls still cares a bit, the smallest ridiculous bit, so he can attribute her with all the meanness of asking that one, of all the questions, just because she already knows the obvious answer.

“ _No,_ ” cuts short Louis, feeling the blood rush to his head at the thought of how, months ago, Rebecca asked them -in one of her rare moments of lucidity— what they wanted as Christmas present. She swore that thanks to her new job she was so happy about (so happy she lasted less than two weeks) she would buy them whatever they wanted, something bigger for Louis because it was his _birthday._

She assured them she would go back on the straight and narrow, she promised, things would be better off, she hugged them confident.

Yeah. There they are now.

It makes Louis sick in the stomach, understanding how those were just words, and words are easily gone with the wind.

He unceremoniously puts the receiver down without bidding goodbye, without another word, and stands there in front of the phone, head leaning against the wall as he tries his best to stop the tears from streaming down his cheeks.

Hard task, that.

He stays still, trying to breath steadily, because every time he’s shaken and overwrought his asthma resurfaces and it always takes a bit to calm down. He tries to focus on exhaling slowly and then breathing in again, watching the wall corroded by the high humidity level, the protuberant pipes that stick out where there is a hole in the wall. He and Juls tried to paint them in white, hoping they would be disguised, in a desperate attempt to not leave this house completely abandoned to itself.

Despite his attempt, the panting doesn’t stop. The call was so unexpected that it actually re-opened all the wounds that Louis thought he had been so able to stitch up together, during these months in which he had felt lonelier than during the rest of his short life.

Lonely and emptied, as well, of all the nice and blithe things he had. It’s so strange, if he thinks about it, because the feeling is not crushing him anymore. It feels more like an existential shade looming over him, a constant reminder, punctual like a kick off on a Sunday afternoon, that for people like him, hoping that the future is storing better things is just the most fruitless and pathetic of the activities.

He gives another punch to the wall, out of spite, out of frustration, rubbing the sleeve of his chunky sweater over his cheeks, gesture that he knows won’t help easing the flush but at least will swipe away the tears he didn’t manage to hold back.

With one last sigh he goes back to the hall to close the door and fetch his backpack, where he scrupulously stashed his last precious purchase from the Vinyl Exchange, one of his favourite places in Manchester ever. He feels a pang of genuine excitement as he carefully pulls out the vinyl, the first Stone Roses’ album, the one they recorded when Reni was still in the band and everything was a lot better, the one with ‘Made of Stone’, his favourite song from the mancunian band. It’s stupid, but the mere sight of the album does a bit comfort him.

According to Louis, the Stone Roses are one of the best things Manchester has ever had, together with Éric Cantona, the footballer, who Louis thinks is made of stone, a bit, too. He’s actually from France _, fine_ , but nobody can deny he bloomed in Manchester.

Funnily enough, both the Stone Roses and Cantona broke Louis’ heart in the span of one mere year, the former disbanding before Louis got to save enough money to see them in concert, the latter retiring from football.

And all of this happened, as if it wasn’t enough, a few months before his sister decided to leave him.

The big dirty trick played by the Roses, that had him feeling betrayed like he never had before (he _trusted_ them, okay? He had to shift to the Blur for a bit after they broke up, because listening to their songs was too painful) didn’t stop him from cutting his hair just like Ian Brown in 1989. He was now sporting this glorious ruffled effortless style (or so he liked to think) with the fringe plastered on the forehead that one hand randomly shoved through it was enough to make it look perfect, just like Ian in the Fool’s Gold music video.

The haircut, together with his blue eyes and frail and puny body, which crushes his every football dream (as if the fact that at thirteen the biggest thing he’s played in is the courtyard of the building hadn’t made it clear enough), face pale and a bit sunken in, makes him look like he is ready to form his own Britpop group. He would really like that, didn’t he lack of the minimum music talent required.

Record in his arms, he goes back to the sitting room. He carefully pulls out the key he wears on a chain around his neck and opens the short drinks cabinet that he designated as hiding-place of the so longed record player and his vinyls collection. Most of them are second-hand, but he is still very proud of his small treasure, and even more proud of adding this little gem to the bundle. He couldn’t believe at his own eyes when he finally tracked it down, during the umpteenth trip among the shelves of the music shop, looking for an unmissable disc. He felt quite irritated, to be honest, with whoever thought it was a good idea to get rid of such a masterpiece, but really grateful to this simpleton all the same, because now the vinyl was in better hands, Louis’ ones, and for a third of the original price.

He kneels down in front of the record player and excitedly puts the vinyl on, fingers throbbing with impatience, careful to place the stylus in the right spot. Sadness vanishes from his limbs for a moment, as the first notes of _I Wanna Be Adored_ fill the air and echo in the carpet-less room.

It doesn’t last, though. Of course it doesn’t last. The moment the music plays, Rebecca starts fidgeting on the couch.

Louis closes his eyes and sighs, ever so frustrated, because if he’s not even allowed to savour his first listening of an album he just bought, then there aren’t things left to enjoy for him in this life.

He has to stand up, reluctantly but he has to, moved by that sense of duty that borders on abnegation sometimes he is still surprised he possesses. He drags himself towards the stove and puts the kettle on for some tea, rummaging in a drawer and fetching some painkillers he brings to Rebecca, together with a glass of water.

“I feel like shit,” she grumbles in complaint, hands pressed on her forehead, eyes wide open and veined in red, just like Louis’, although the reason for that is definitely, _definitely_ not the same.

Louis huffs out an exhale and shoves the pill in her mouth, leaving the glass of water on the armrest. He stays there to watch her swallow the medicine and then close her eyes, throwing one hand through her hair.

“You know, thank you,” she says in a raspy voice, catching Louis off guard. He’s so upset, though, that not even the tiniest hint of gratitude, for an insignificant thing, among all the things he has and he is still doing for her, has any effect on him.

He never gets a _thank you_ for earning money, for cooking, for cleaning the flat. He does for giving her a painkiller, which in the end is the most selfish gesture, generated from the disgust he feels when he has to deal alone with an hangover and depressed mother, wandering and grumbling in the flat, moping and looking for something to drink, until it’s time to go out again.

It’s not even a _thank you,_ what he needs.

What he needs is to see her put something nice on and go search a respectable job instead of those occasional ones that never last. He needs to see her make him some lunch to eat at school while he brushes his teeth in the morning, and then get out of the flat together to go to different places. He needs to hear her call him from the window because she needs help with dinner and it’s too late to keep playing football in the streets anyway.

That’s what he needs, instead of watching her getting upset over a bottle of alcohol, rely on the unemployment support money (which is not much and which she manages to spend in the span of a week anyway) only then to steal with no scruple from Louis’ money to buy cigarettes or other stuff.

Instead of watching her suffer, continuously suffer, when she’s clear-headed and when she’s not, and make Louis suffer in consequence.

The need to cry is not abate, though he really is trying, so Louis sits on the floor, legs hooked together, and hides his head in between his knees. The record player keeps playing in the background; it now shifted to _Waterfall_ , which he finds a metaphorically befitting theme song for the situation. Louis has always identified himself with the girl Brown so light-heartedly sings about, even though their pains have a different nature.

“What’s wrong Louis?”

Louis snaps out of his thoughts and abruptly lifts his chin up as he feels his mum’s hand stroking his shoulder. He sniffs up, jolting and twisting away from the touch, almost in surprise, because it’s been long since they had a proper physical contact that meant something, if one doesn’t count all the times he’s found her wasted or asleep on the landing and had to drag her inside and put her to bed, surrendering to cradle her cheek or kissing her forehead.

He thinks one shouldn’t be this surprised if their mother is worried because her own son is in tears, and he feels like crying even more, because there was a time when Rebecca was even _good_ at this, at listening to him, at taking him in her protective arms if something was wrong. A time when his problems were a lot easier to deal with, because he was just a kid.

But he is a kid also _now_ , except his mother’s cuddles are foreign to him like they would be to a forty years old man, all married and settled, who goes visit his parents once every—when he remembers.

“Julie called,” he manages in between the stifled awkward sobs he’s very embarrassed about. Rebecca stands up staggering, still dizzy and hangover. She lights up a cigarette in an experienced gesture, bringing it to hang loosely from one corner of her mouth, twitched into an aloof and unimpressed grimace.

Louis can see her from his peripherals, leaning against the tall shelf by the hall, clad in her holey black tee and too short shorts, eyes empty and red, tiny wrinkles she’s too young to display already around her mouth and on the forehead, a generally sloppy look that is always a punch in the stomach to Louis, especially when paired with a moment when she’s almost sober, conscious of what she says and what she does.

That’s her, Rebecca, his debauched and dissolute mum.

Every time she plucks the cigarette out of her mouth, she puffs out the smoke in small studied clouds, that get lost in the air. Then she directly flicks the ashes on the floor, careless of the fact Louis' the one who will have to clean that mess. He's lucky the flat doesn’t have any carpet, because the rooms are already irrevocably soaked in smoke as they are, the furniture gray and greasy, the curtains that release that oppressive and annoying smell even when no one is smoking.

“What did she want?” she asks, betrayed in her feigned lack of interest by a suddenly too stiff stance. Louis doesn’t know if he should be surprised by not hearing her calling Julie with unrepeatable names, or accept that Rebecca must be in one of her good moments, and her brain must be working in a normal way, or quite.

He hauls himself up from the floor to turn the kettle off and pour the boiling water into two mugs, rummaging in his pockets and finding some teabags he mooched from the restaurant where he works. He doesn’t feel bad because he’s completely sure that Matilde, his boss’ wife, knows exactly that it’s Louis the one taking them, and she purposely leaves some more of his favourite kind in the bowl on the counter.

He intently brews up his own tea and leaves the other mug filled with steaming water, together with another teabag, on the table. He never knows when Rebecca is actually in the mood for some tea with her son, or if she’d rather wipe out the mug angrily, smacking it to the floor in hundreds of pieces, risking to get scalded.

He never knows.

“I—I don’t know,” admits Louis in a stutter, taking a sip of the hot and bitter drink that burns down his throat, leaving him with a feeling of masochistic pleasure, a warm caress opposed to the stone-cold that is wrapping the flat.

Rebecca ashes the cigarette on the wrought iron shelf one last time and leaves the butt there, on display, as if it was a sport prize to be proud of or a souvenir from the holidays. Then she gets close to the table and unexpectedly takes the mug and the teabag, sitting beside Louis on the old and flea-bitten couch.

As she plops down, Louis can’t keep himself from sighing. His chest tightens and the jaw clenches, and it doesn’t help that the only thing Rebecca can do is eye him, slightly annoyed, as she blows on the drink to cool it off.

“It wasn’t important, then,” she decides dryly, sagging against the cushions of the sofa, taking a loud sip of tea.

Louis closes his eyes tiredly, feeling all the weight on his eyelids and forehead, a weight that he’s quite sure a thirteen year old boy shouldn’t experience. If he squints them hard enough, maybe he can imagine living in a parallel world, where he’s just come home from school and he’s chilling with a warm tea and his favourite band as background noise, trying everything he can to postpone starting his homework.

Instead, all he can do is wonder why he thought opening up to his mother and searching for some comfort in her could be a good idea, when it is blatant how the woman doesn’t have anything to give him anymore, if not a cold glaze, an impersonal touch on the shoulder.

“Or maybe it was,” he whispers adamantly, sharpening his glare on his mother who keeps drinking her tea, unfazed and unbothered. He reminisces the conversation with his sister in his head, feeling his stomach somersault at the thought that maybe Julie was calling seeking for some help and he didn’t even want to listen.

But how could he help her, from the other side of the English Channel, when he is not even capable of keeping his mother away from the things that hurt her?

“This tea tastes like shit,” mutters Rebecca out of the blue, blatantly ignoring Louis’ words. He peeks at her and sees the frown on her face, sensing from the hard lines around her mouth and eyes that she’s in for for throwing a fit. She actually drank all of the tea, but doesn’t miss the chance to drop the cup on the floor, kicking it mischievously with a resolved face and watching it roll away, miraculously intact, scowling at it like a little girl who has found a spider on her favourite dress.

Louis tenses, and doesn’t even have the strength to tell her off anymore. He stands up, to pick the mug up and put it together with his one in the sink, happy to leave them there and get out, finally free to escape for a bit the toxic and stifling atmosphere of the flat, already unbearable even if he’s only been here for less than one hour. But then he knows it would probably be worse coming back tonight only to find a whole stack of dishes to wash, so he grabs a sponge and the soap he has taken to dilute with water, to save money, and starts to beaver away at the mugs.

He leaves the duties for the moments when he’s already sad, Louis, so that if by chance he happens to be in a good mood, there would be less unpleasant circumstances to undermine it.

By the time he is done, Rebecca has already dozed off, taking uncaringly all the space on the couch and making little snoring noises.

Unable to look at her like that, Louis wipes his hands dry on his ripped jeans that luckily are back to being fashionable (even though his are quite unpurposely threadbare) and kneels on the floor to turn the record player off, putting back the vinyl in its cover and making sure he locks the cabinet. He grabs the keys for the flat and his denim jacket and steps out of the door.

“I’m going to play footie,” he announces somehow pointlessly, tone of voice dry and clearly addressing the room’s walls since Rebecca is asleep. And even if she weren’t, she wouldn’t care anyway.

He closes the door behind his back and after a moment of hesitation he decides he’s not going to turn the key, tired of having to feel like the witch in Rapunzel just because it’s unfathomable sometimes to consider his mother like a reasoning, conscious adult.

This time around he goes down the stairs without jumping any step, hopping them off in quick succession to warm up, like the professional footballers do on the speed ladder. He increases the pace, foreshadowing a potential scrimmage with the kids from the neighbourhood in the small, tiny courtyard, which admittedly couldn’t be in a sorrier state, but at least is a place where they can play undisturbed.

Once he gets there, Aleks is luckily already practicing, kicking eagerly the football against the wall of the building. The boy, short but relatively built, is so focused on his game he doesn't notice the door opening. Louis looks at him softly as he waits for a moment on the last steps to collect himself, trying to pair his hearbeat to the bounces of the ball against the concrete as Aleks kicks it to try and hit the corner of the perimetral wall of the yard, with no apparent success so far.

“Oi mate! Got yourself a new football there?” he yells when he thinks he's calmed down, forcing his face in a self-controlled one, because he doesn’t want questions, doesn’t want to share how distressed he truly is, no matter how good of a frend Aleks might be.

Aleks turns around startled at Louis’ voice and misses the bounce of the ball that flies out to the other side of the yard.

“Nah,” shrugs the boy, running faintly to fetch it after acknowledging Louis. “I lifted it from good old Tom Polyphemus. I think he has gone blind to the other eye too, you know?” He adds, bursting into a loud laugh that sounds more like a raspy bark, passing the football to Louis. “He didn’t even notice I was in his rattrap of a shop. Easy as a pie.”

Louis manages to fake a chuckle as he stops the ball Aleks passed him with his right instep, trying to hide the feeling of guilt and cover the grimace that opened up on his face.

He has always liked Tom and his small quirky bazaar, is the thing. He can't help feeling sorry for the poor old man, as he plays with the implicated ball, because since forever he’s been easy target of the meanest pranks planned by the kids from the neighbourhood, who like to tease and call him names just because he’s not able to defend himself.

When he was small, Louis used to always go there and buy the footie trading cards to stick on the collection book (that he systematically never completed) whenever he had some coins to spare, reward of his grandmother for mowing the lawn. But then his grandma died, his father left them, and Louis didn’t have time to stick cards on books anymore, nor coins to buy them.

Sometimes he still stops by the shop as he walks to work and exchanges some words with the man, who is always happy to have someone to talk to. He must feel lonely there, and Louis understands him. Sometimes he has pity of Louis and gives him some football stickers from the past seasons, even. Last time he found the George Best card, and he holds it dear as a precious treasure, together with his other few belongings.

Louis is a poor boy, but he doesn’t steal. He still doesn’t know well what respect and dignity are, but he feels that stealing is too much of a low thing to do, even for somebody like him.

He has never liked stereotypes, after all.

“Sick,” he murmurs then with no emotion, kicking the ball against the wall and waiting for it to bounce back to him. He seizes it and kicks it again, passing it to Aleks this time. “Nice top,” he comments then in a snort, when he lifts his chin up and notices the t-shirt the other boy is sporting, which displays the black and white faces of the Gallagher brothers from Oasis.

He knits his eyebrows together, to make sure his sarcastic tone is not misinterpreted. God forbid somebody starts to think he would ever betray the Blur to listen to those Manchester City supporters. Manchester has only one great band and one great football team, as far as he’s concerned.

“Oh, shut up,” grins Aleks, accepting the ball and playing with no qualms. “You always talk the same shit, Louis. They’re cool, and the majority of the country agrees with me,” he snaps, starting to run, ball to his foot, dribbling non-existing opponents. He doesn’t last, though. He never lasts if Louis doesn’t want him to last, and all it takes is a studied movement for the ball to be glued back to the blue-eyed boy’s feet.

“Sure," Louis looks pointedly at him, sneering. "Then the majority of the country is happy to see at the top of the charts a band which has a terrible, _terrible_ football taste and thinks that rhyming _itching_ and _kitchen_ is something admissible,” he maintains, shaking his head. He’s just passionate about his things, but nobody would understand, not even Aleks, who rolls his eyes.

“I just like Wonderwall,” he shrugs exasperatedly, like every time Louis tries to talk about bands, and britpop, and  _quality music._

“Of course you do,” he teases, but decides to drop it. “How is it that it’s only me and you today?” he asks then, when glancing around the deserted courtyard which echoes with his voice.

Aleks gestures him to pass the ball, which Louis does, and he starts to juggle it with his knees, probably to show his skills to Louis himself, who everybody looks at with respect and admiration since by all means he is one cut above them all. Or maybe even two.

“School,” mutters Aleks shriekingly, mouth twitched into a grimace. “Not everybody is living the dream as you are, Tomlinson,” he says sarcastically, as if he hadn't skipped classes as well.

Louis gets closer to him, arms solid behind his back so they won’t get in the way, and with a deft movement of his hips he intercepts the ball and he pushes himself forward, leaving his friend completely outwit.

It feels like he wants to punish him for the remarking comment, which grows him irritated, even though it's not really his fault.

He’s not living the dream at all, despite what the kids, children of the working class that this barracks of flats given out for a cheap price confined to that area of Manchester (well far away from the pristine streets paved in regular cobbles), may think. They would probably be right happy of what is dreadful and disheartening only in Louis’ unconscious; not having a mother or a father who forces you to go to school in the morning.

He would give anything to have that. To get his education and the few privileges ought to him, like a proper family, for starters. Instead, being independent, not in school anymore, around here awards him with almost as much respect as his football talent does, that makes up for all the teasing and the mocking he gets for liking to read and study poetry, for liking history and old classic novels and Russian authors. 

“I reckon you’re living the dream as well, given you’re here letting me snatch footballs from you so easy,” taunts him Louis, attempting then an unlikely elastic, one of the most difficult football moves, that he surprisingly manages to execute. It’s tragic how the only witness to his feat is Aleks, whose eyes are now wide open in disbelief, big as two golf balls.

“What the fuck Louis!” he whistles slowly, admiring the movements of Louis’ feet. Louis doesn’t stop, he keeps playing, teasing the football that always comes round between his feet, bare, because you play football better with no shoes, if like Louis you don’t have the right ones because you can’t afford them.

“So _easily,_ ” he corrects himself then, realising he made grammar mistake, feeling at fault, frustratingly, even if the other boy hadn’t even noticed and wouldn’t have cared for sure even if he had.

He always feels like that, as if he is less because of the life he has, because he is not a normal boy of his age, and he has this constant need to prove people wrong, to look for validation, to dismiss assumptions. That just because he is poor he steals, that just because he doesn't go to school he is stupid, he can't speak proper English or understand maths. But he does, he fucking does, he studies hard and reads whenever he has the time, reading Julie's old textbooks, doing it all by himself.

Yet it doesn't change what he is, a boy who doesn't go to school, who lives in poor Manchester, who washes dishes for a living, who has an alchoolic mum.

It fuels him with an anger that sometimes he cannot control, like he cannot control people's perceptions. He angles his body just a bit, adjusting himself for the kick, and he smashes the ball against the wall, out of frustration, with maybe more energy than it was needed. It hits it with the dry sound of a slap in the face, and then immediately bounces back with the same speed, and Louis has to jump and block it with his chest so that it doesn’t hurt him.

“ _Woah,_ ” utters Aleks, who stood there, still, the entire time, watching enthralled Louis’ furious and pretentious razzing with the football that matched his thoughts. “Calm down mate.”

Louis stops, looks down at his feet, cheeks reddening, because he’s hot and flush and the cold pushes pungent on his skin, but also because he is a bit embarrassed. He's usually better at keeping anger or emotion bottled up.

With a delicate back-heel he meekly lets the ball roll towards Aleks.

“Sorry,” he manages, lifting his glance to stare at the other boy in the eyes. “My sister called,” he blurts out plainly before he can think better of it, and he knows that’s all he needs to say and it’s an explanation good enough.

Aleks is staring back at him actually, mouth agape as if he’s about to say something. But then he closes it and quickly regains his composure, coming closer to give him a pat on the back, lips pursed in a thin, thin line. He doesn't need words. He doesn’t push to make Louis say more, and Louis is kind of grateful for that. Maybe he needs to learn to give more credit to these alleged friendships born in the streets over the past years.

Because kids from the streets know how to stay by your side, after all. Kids from the streets don’t pry into your life, into your problems, because they already have their own to take care of. Kids from the streets mind their own business, because life is already complicated enough without taking on other people’s worries. They never deny you comfort, though, despite how brusque and oddly formal that can be.

To compensate the silence that fell between them, and that none of them now knows how to break, Aleks kicks softly the ball towards Louis, and they start to pass it back and forth quietly, with no real and concrete attempt at actually playing. It helps Louis to stop playing the conversation with Julie in his head, at least, and he suspects Aleks knows that.

The sharp cold makes itself pressing in their bones, while the sun is already setting in the winter day that’s becoming shorter and shorter as the season flows.

“Do you maybe want to come over for dinner? I think mum is making Sorrel soup,” asks Aleks abruptly, stopping the game.

Louis glances at him, a bit taken aback, but he knows this is Alek’s way of offering him some comfort and his heart warms up a bit, melting some of the cold that constantly grips it.

He doesn’t really want to take advantage of Aleks’ offer. He knows how worth a meal is in Aleks’ family, where they always have too many mouths to feed. Although the comparison between having a warm meal sitting at a table with a family who chats and shares snippets of their day, and coming back into an empty house and having to cook for yours—yeah, Louis knows is patently ruthless.

“Thanks mate but I don’t think that—“ he’s about to decline gently, when he’s cut off by the sound of his own name, yelled with anger.

“Louis!”

He and Aleks turn instantly towards the door of Louis’ building, where the tense voice comes from. His mother is on the front door, hands on her hips, managing to look sadly small and weak despite the contrived stance.

“Louis, here right now!”

He doesn’t move. His eyes flicker over Aleks, searching for help. The other boy bent his head in embarrassment, though, taking some steps backwards to become estranged from the situation.

Louis notices Rebecca’s glossy eyes and he suddenly knows what they mean. He goes to run away, used as he is to this kind of situation. He should thank her, his mum. He would never be able to run that fast if it wasn’t for her.

But then he makes the mistake to flash her a glance, and his stomach is just foul and pain all over again, so he takes some steps towards the door, his mother, her frowned face, her lost and fleeting looks, meeting him half-way.

It only takes one split second for her to pounce on Louis, pulling at the collar of his jacket and jerking hardly and frantically. “You took them from me! I just bought that packet and you stole it from me!” She yells unrestrained.

Louis looks at her in open shock, wondering how on earth did she manage to get hammered again, when he personally made sure that every drop of alcohol had disappeared from the flat, when he begged and begged _again_ the neighbours not to hand her anything, not even if she implored or threatened.

“Took what?” asks Louis, voice week as he lets her shake him, unable to react.

“My cigarettes!” She yells hysterically, digging her nails into the flesh of Louis’ wrists, leaving some red marks on it. Louis notices that Aleks is about to come to his aid and he gestures him a ‘no’ with a shake of his head.

“I didn’t take anything,” he utters in a whisper, and then he starts to feel the anger build up and knows he can’t control it anymore. “It’s your own fault! You only know how to drink and smoke and do stupid things and then forget about it all!” He shouts irately, freeing himself from her grip with a sharp twist.

Rebecca loses balance for a moment and Louis thinks she’s going to fall, when instead she takes one sloppy step forward to steady herself, coughing from the strain and the smoke stashed in her lungs.

“Give me some money,” she exhales raspyly, flatly, voice low, almost a whisper, almost a prey.

Louis looks at her. Looks at her and despises her. Looks at her and wants to cry. Looks at her and knows he needs to be stronger than this.

“I’m not giving you anything," he utters. "I’m not giving you anything because it doesn’t have to be like this. I’m not giving you anything because it’s not fair, when it’s years that you don’t give me anything,” he manages in between the stifled sobs, muttering words he kept prisoners of his lips for too long.

She looks daggers at him, wounded, one small possibility that finally she listened to him, that she understood. So Louis turns away from her, considering the discussion done, not bearing to have that image in front of his eyes anymore. But Rebecca mustn’t be on the same page as him.

“I’ve never wanted you anyway. You’re just like your father!”

See, Louis likes reading a lot. When he read about people who get stuck, paralysed on their spot, because of something that has been said or done, he couldn’t fathom how that can be a real reaction. He always thought that was a hyperbole, a literary pretext.

Now he finally gets it, and he feels just like that _, paralysed_. He can’t move, and Rebecca’s prickly words echo inside him as if, of his body, there are only the walls left.

Then he manages to turn around, cheeks tear-streaked. “You don’t even know who my father is!” He cries out in her face, releasing the weight he’s been carrying with him for so long. The smack the woman gives him on the cheek doesn’t hurt more than having to put out that truth that everybody persists on keeping away from him. Or maybe they don’t even try, they just do not care about telling him, because nobody cares enough about him.

But Pete cared, evidently.

He must have cared, because when he left, and Louis asked him how could he, how could he abandon his family, his kids, he said pointedly that he didn’t have any regret, because Louis wasn’t even his son, and who knew about Julie. He made sure to let him know that his blue eyes and his sharp cheekbones are anything but born from love, rather from one of his mother’s rogue nights with the first random bloke in a club. Rogue nights that now were back in full-force, that Pete was too tired to put up with.

Louis looks at her disbelievingly, agry, rummaging frantically through his pockets to fetch a bunch of pounds, that he throws with rage at his mother, who fell on the cold cemented floor of the yard, looking in horror at her hand. As if it was the first time that she hit him. She just forgets.

Rebecca lifts her glance, moving to reach out for Louis, but he's having none of that. Not now, probably not for a long time.

"Louis,"

"Don't," he says firmly, giving then Aleks a nod of his head, gesturing him they go. The boy hurriedly fetches his football and Louis’ shoes, handing them to him with an half-smile of compassion and excuse that makes Louis shiver.

“Shit mate. It's fucked up,” comments Aleks tentatively, rubbing a hand on his back.

“Don’t I know,” murmurs Louis sadly after some seconds of silence, looking at the floor. “I think I’ll accept your offer for some soup, after all.”

Aleks doesn’t say anything. He just points him towards the staircase to his building, understanding, and together they walk, a bit shocked, without looking back once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> until the next chapter!  
> tumblr: glowstojevskij  
> :)


	2. January 1999

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A small Harry appears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to [hollytabatha](http://archiveofourown.org/users/hollytabatha) for beta reading this chapter so quickly! I miracously post on time, the achievement, the joy.

_Manchester, 8 th of January 1999_

 

All it takes is the blinking of an eye, and the Christmas holidays are gone without affecting Louis in the slightest. It could have been any other period of the year and it would have felt just the very same. Yet it’s 1999, and it doesn’t seem like anything has changed at all, apart from the calendar on the wall.

Anyway, if he has to admit it, the last days of the year weren’t too bad. All things considered.

One, he got a shift at the restaurant for New Year’s Eve, that of course nobody ever wants to work that night, while he was happy to. Two, that way he didn’t even have to spend the celebrations alone, like the year before, listening to the sounds of the fireworks all by himself, hiding away in the dark cold of his room. That, is something that has always taken on sort of a sorrowful meaning for Louis; the unnecessarily sparing himself of the beauty and the joy of the bright colours to only endure the downside, the noises that scare children, make dogs bark and alarms go obnoxiously off.

The thing is, Louis has never expected nor demanded that the mere changing of a date has to have the consequential effect to change the rhythm of his life, but he has always liked the concept of being able to set a new beginning in sight. An illusorily arbitrary new beginning, common to the whole world, because it’s still dictated by the flowing of time. He has always liked to think that even if it doesn’t happen to him, there is always that possibility to file away everything that has come before, almost as if it doesn’t count anymore, almost as if it was just an experiment, a beta version, and then start from scratches all over again.

As the first days of January pass by, in the torpidity of a town, Manchester, which is slowly getting a hold of itself after the Christmas frenzy, with its own rhythm, in andante just like the Christmas carols, he starts to realise, though, that it’s all tall tales. That the will of making everything better is not enough to have it happen for _real_.

He glances over the window of the restaurant as he polishes the tables in the room with a damp cloth until the wood is all clean and shiny, just like Matilde requests, because she cares a lot about this kind of details, and the restaurant must always be tidy and pristine. Everything is slow and muffled. People walk in the street, head bent, and brush past the restaurant without stopping by, even if it’s lunchtime. The room is almost empty, save for a couple of habitual customers who are always here, no matter what, and that's why he had to resort to wiping tables.

When it’s empty and customer-less like this, the restaurant never fails to make Louis a bit sad and nostalgic. Bruno, the owner, an Italian rugged man and optimist by nature, says that it’s normal, that the first day of the year everyone decides it’s a good idea to start being on a diet but most of them don’t last long. All it takes is two weeks for the restaurant to be full again, swarmed by people who come begging for a nice pasta made by the letter of the book.

Usually, Louis’ duty would consist in lonely washing all the dirty dishes in the tub in the corner of the kitchen, but sometimes Matilde nudges him softly and tells him to go help in the restaurant, either to help clean or to wait tables, so he can get some spare money from tips. Because she knows how much Louis needs it, that spare money.

He supposes he was lucky to find this job. It started just as a part-time thing, when he used to do some shifts in the afternoon, after school, to save some money so he didn’t have to always ask his parents, since he knew they were already struggling a lot. It was like a weight of guilt, having to ask money for books or music to Rebecca or Pete, and see that sigh of desperation, of shame, in return. How the tables turned!

Then when Pete left, and his mother just stopped, altogether, and Julie told him that she couldn’t manage anymore, Louis showed up at the restaurant to tell Bruno that he couldn’t keep his shifts, that he needed to find a steady, full-time and, especially, more remunerative job. Louis thinks he will never be able to remove from his memory the look the man, only apparently curmudgeon and austere, gave him.

That has to be one of the very few times he felt understood, more than pitied or indulged. Genuinely helped, more than had mercy of. And maybe even a little bit loved.

He knows now he has found some sort of home, through his gentle grateful smiles, through his blue eyes that Matilde can’t stop praising, in the heart of this couple of middle-aged kind souls, who carved out a bit of their homecountry in this neighbourhood in the centre of Manchester. He hadn’t know how big that place was, though, until Bruno met him with that look, eyes bottomless and serious, and then asked him to come back the morning next, to start working the whole day, with a full wage, despite his young age.

Every day, Louis is more and more thankful for these two people who feel a bit like family, who give him a warm meal for lunch or dinner, whenever he has a shift, who are the only ones who care about seeing him grow up and become a boy, first, and then a young adult. Who care about the things he has to say, and the things he does, if he's happy or not.

They smile kindly when they see him enter the restaurant every morning, hands clad in his chunky blue mittens buried in the pockets of his old denim jacket , that he bought with Rebecca when she still felt like doing things with Louis. It’s one of those jackets with a fur line on the inside, one that you can also tear off, so Louis could use the same outwear both during winter and spring, Rebecca said, all content and satisfied with the smart purchase.

Louis snorts, irritated at the memory, as he resumes cleansing the table, rubbing the rag on the surface with so much eagerness that he could as well be sanding it. Matilde smiles at him softly even now, as she brushes past him, humming in a limpid and thin voice the motif of an Italian song coming from the record player, swaying her curvy hips with an involuntarily coquettish air.

He schools his expression into a more relaxed one at the sight, returning back a smile and watching her delicately arrange fresh flowers in the vases that are set as centrepieces on each table. Louis doesn’t have a clue what the song is about, but he figures it must be one of Matilde’s favourites, because every time she hears the first notes her eyes brighten up, and Louis, even though he doesn’t understand a word in Italian, finds himself humming the melody alongside, warming up to the thought that those notes must be bringing her back to some joyous memories from her youth.

And Louis feels bewitched as he watches her move, as does Bruno, who stares at her fondly for some moments before heading to the record player with a solemn air, pulling Matilde aside by making her twirl and declaring that _‘it’s my turn now’._

At that he puts on one of those old progressive rock vinyls from the seventies, careful to choose the right track. He closes his eyes and stays there, still, enraptured in recollecting stuff about who knows what or who knows who.

Louis likes these moments the best, likes the atmosphere of times he can only imagine, and seeing how passionate Bruno is about his music. Just like he himself is.

He can’t put together a sentence in Italian, but he found himself asking Bruno the name of certain songs, interested, and then writing them with a shaky handwriting—that still carries the roundness of the standard cursive taught in school—in the small journal that he always takes with him in the pocket of his denim jacket, so that he could check and track it down at the Vinyl Exchange.

His research was quite fruitless, though. When he casually mentioned it to Bruno, the man got all indignant and hurriedly pulled out an old album, by this band called Area, from his personal collection. It had this cover that Louis instantly liked, because it had this Warhol-esque design that reminded him of a period of time he would have truly loved to live in. Then he gifted it to Louis, just like that, with no hesitation whatsoever, entrusting him to take care of it, because it was one of his favourites.

So now Louis has this one more album to his collection. He was pretty used to listening to it in the restaurant, but it’s all different when he puts it in his own record player and it’s just him and the music, and sometimes words that he doesn’t understand.

The same as now, the vinyl starts and it’s like the singer is directing his beautiful voice to him, it’s like he is accusing him with that assertive drumming tainted with Balkan sounds, and then spurring him with that rhythmic phrasing that sounds beautifully excessive and a bit too angry.

"What does it mean?" he asks Bruno, because Louis always wants to understand, in this reflex to suffice to his every lacuna.

 _“Look forward boy, and don’t stop, lift one fist up without shaking, look your reality in the face,"_  sings Bruno, as the song progresses, and only turns to Louis at the refrain to watch his curious expression turn into a sheepish one. " _Look forward and don’t think about it, your story travels with you.”_

“And what is that about?” he's left hanging, his cheeks redden like when words hit close to home.

“They sang about the war, you know,” explains Bruno patiently, but with dreamy eyes “but through the nice things, through the desire for freedom and revolution. They say that young people didn’t have to feel the blame and the weight of the situation but they had to fight, to move on.” 

To Louis then the music became strangely fuelling and comforting, as it always does. It prods a bit too much at the fact that he only finds this comfort in the same chords repeated through a song or in some sparse words he needs the translation to, rather than in people who care about him. But all the same, and because it’s something independent from him, it feels so very overwhelming, coming from someone who _knows_ how it must feel to struggle with your life, somebody who knows at the same time that there’s a way out. And these words now make a melody that suddenly makes sense and gives him hope and dances around him.

Moments always feel nicer when there’s music to accompany them, and even now Louis is so focused and engrossed by the song that he doesn’t notice the door opening until the cold wind from outside, violently bursting in and carrying little snowflakes, reaches him.

“Come on now. Enough with this communist music from the past century Bruno, you’re surely not going back to your twenties. Put the Juventus match on, it's starting!”

Louis and the pair of spouses simultaneously turn to glance at the door, spotting Mr. Renzo on the entrance.

Mr. Renzo is Bruno’s closest friend, and one of their most affectionate customers; a hardy man, ruddy in the face, who takes his hat off and brushes the snowflakes from his coat. The two men have known each other for years, or so they tell Louis, and always agree on everything, save for football and politics.

“Close the door, we just lit the fire!” Reprimands Matilde, glaring in the direction of the man, who curls his mouth in a small smile and complies to the order, before getting closer to the vexed woman and planting a kiss on the back of her hand to achieve forgiveness.

Bruno snorts and slightly turns the volume of the music down, just to make a scene, gesturing to Louis to set a table.

“It’s unfortunate for you, Renzo, that here we only appreciate good music and do not care about minor football teams in the slightest,” he smirks, turning the television on anyway. In the years,  _Matilde's_ has become the meeting place of many Italian immigrants, who miss both their home comfort food and their football league, and who systematically end up meeting there for some pints and a bit of banter, to become Sunday regulars. “At which minute should we expect a penalty in your favour?” adds Bruno, in an innocently joking tone.

Renzo rolls his eyes and sits down, after waving mildly at Louis in greeting. “And when should we expect a new manager for your team? Maybe then you’ll actually be able to end up at the tenth place this year.”

Bruno sighs and clouds abruptly, and then goes behind the counter to take two beers.

“We lost to Parma yesterday, so I wouldn’t be shocked by a Monday sacking to be honest,” he mutters helplessly, taking a seat next to his friend. It only takes a few moments to see them already long lost into an overheated discussion about football. managers, useless players and transfers. Louis listens from afar, intent in his job, until Renzo calls him.

“So, Louis, you’ve put yourself into the Inter supporters’ den,” says Renzo, impressively gulping down half a pint of beer in one go and then pulling a teasing disappointed face. “I kinda trusted you.”

Louis laughs. “Well, at least I’m paid to stay here,” he says with a small shrug, unable to hold that, but earning himself an approving look from his boss.

“Well, I’m speechless. You’re raising him well, Bruno,” comments Renzo both huffy and amused at the same time.

Louis looks at him, a nice prickling feeling under his skin at the word _raising._ It’s stupid, he knows that, it’s just saying. It’s not like they’re actually raising him, and if anything Louis is raising himself. But it feels nice, the thought, and he’s letting himself have that. He’s decided.

“He’s a clever boy. Likes good football.” Bruno smiles proudly and ruffles his hair, a gesture that would normally irk Louis, would that come from anybody else, but in that moment it just fits, he needed a contact and Bruno knew, and gave it to him.

“I actually only root for Manchester United,” clarifies Louis, just to set the record straight. “But Inter has got Ronaldo after all. And Baggio,” he adds, pointing expectantly at a squad picture proudly hung on the wall behind the counter as if he was pointing out the obvious.

“ _Baggio_? But Baggio is over!” exclaims Renzo, widening his eyes.

“It’s not true!” Protest Louis and Bruno in an indignant chorus, almost personally hit in the honour. Louis hates it, when somebody judges a player for one unhappy mistake, for one wrong decision. He sees them as these mighty soldiers who made it in the most wonderful of the ways, and envies a little bit what they represent, what they do, the unconditional love they receive. He would love to be them, to do the thing he likes the most for a living.

“Fine, fine, I give up, I can’t win," caves Renzo, twitching his mouth into a smile as he throws a packet of football cards at Louis, that he manages to catch with a quick jolt of his arm, before they fall to the ground. "If you like him so much then maybe you can see if you find him in there,” smirks the man.

Louis stares back disbelievingly and doesn’t know what to say. He hopes the surprise in his eyes and the joy with which he tears the packet open are speaking on his behalf, while he interrogates himself on why is it, that a shiver has to run down his spine when someone shows care or consideration for him.

“You’re free to go if you want, Lou. It's not like there’s much more to do here, save for bearing with these two,” tells him Matilde then, with a soft smile, leaning on the doorframe of the kitchen and wiping her hands on a tea towel.

Louis nods, and after excusing himself to the two men and thanking Mr. Renzo once again, he puts on his multi-seasonal jacket, his gloves and his beanie, which Matilde made with her own hands and gave him for Christmas and which flattens his fringe on his forehead but keeps his ears very warm, and he gets out, making the bell above the door twinkle goodbye.

The icy air immediately hits him like a brick in the face, cutting and stinging. Snowflakes whirl sparse in the wind and the sky is already foggy gray and murky, both because the days are still short with winter and also because a gray sky is landscape of Manchester just like the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

It's so rare these days, to get a breather. Swarmed as he is with work, he was gasping for some time to himself, to do his things. Yet, he almost regrets leaving, regrets the comforting warmth of the restaurant, the smell of pizza and burnt olive wood that creaks in the oven and that badly clashes with his empty house and lonely dinner-making, an image that never stops being depressing.

For as long as he can, he tries to shy away from all that, and instead of chasing the tram back home he settles on walking slowly, while humming to himself one of his favourite songs from _Blur_ , hands buried in his pockets, wishing he owned one of those portable walkman audio cassette players, to be able to listen to the bands he likes as he purposely loses himself in the streets of the town.

Walking through Manchester always feels nice. It’s made in circular paths that go all round the town, and it's easy leading into a road full of high street shops paved in cobblestones and coming out in the open countryside, or crossing the bridges on the river from the council housing neighbourhoods and ending up in the more affluent ones. He doesn’t really know how long he's walked, because the sky always greyer and the sun occluded by the clouds deprive him from the notion of minutes or even hours passing, and he’s so used to walking and running that his legs never get tired easily. He walks and walks, on the damp ground as well as on the concrete asphalt and on the stones placed with methodical care and then on the polished gravel of Didsbury Park. He doesn’t even know how he ended up in the rich Didsbury, but there, as he finally stops and breathes and takes in the well-trimmed hedge of the houses right across the street, the windows protected by the soft curtains, the expensive façades, he feels his legs weak, feels like he’s walking on clouds, and wonders jealously how it must be for the kids who live in these stiff houses knowing that the only thing they need to do is cross the street and they have this massive pitch to play football all to themselves.

A pitch with the turf all neat and well-finished, the goal mouths, and all the space in this world, instead of streets full of holes and cars with their blare-y horns and drivers threatening of running over you and your bloody ball if you don’t clear out straight away.

Louis cannot believe how unfairly deserted this gem is, a bunch of kids preferring the equipped playground just by the pitch and just three boys, who look about Louis’ age, except one who seems smaller (even though Louis’ not one to judge because the boy could just have a minute body, just like he does) passing the ball. You can tell they are boys from the upper class Manchester, so different from the ones Louis is used to play and interact with, the hair-cuts clean and tidy, the heavy and expensive coats, the pristine leather football they’re playing with, straight out of this Premier League season. One of them temerariously challenges the cutting-cold weather and is even wearing a full Chelsea kit, with the half-sleeved shirt bearing the name _Poyet_ on the back, while his jacket is carefully folded and discarded inside the goalmouth, together with the hope his mother won’t appear on the window of the house and spot him breaking the first and most important of the mum-rules:  _put your jacket on_.

The three of them are slowly kicking the ball back and forth in their small circle, giggling now and then because of something one of them says. They are not that good at football, to be honest. The smaller one, especially, is quite the disaster, stumbling in his own feet while attempting a basic kick on the spot and always passing the ball in the wrong direction. If Louis were to play with him he would have already lost his patience and would have probably yelled him to get a grip. The other two boys seem totally relaxed instead, and they watch him play with a caring smile as they keep passing him the ball, spurring him to try again.

Louis finds himself being jealous of their proper football, of the laced football boots, studded, so you’re not swallowed by the turf, not even when it’s damp and muddy like today. Jealous of the proper goal nets, of the official kit with the name of their favourite footballer written across the back, jealous of the simple chance they have of just rollicking play football.

While he is busy being jealous he stands still, watching them with a cynic glare, just like a ghost, hands in the pockets, like always, that prickle and almost hurt with the need and the want to kick a ball. It’s in moments like these that it strikes him how some people get to enjoy things and live normally, to do something with their time and build and not bury the best of their days, while all he gets is to dream and to watch and to long. He builds ideal worlds in his head, like castles in the air that crumble at the first bat of eyelids that brings him back to the reality of this destiny falling dismally upon him. He’s good at dreaming, but he never shares his feelings, he bottles up and knows this grows him harsher, not like he really is, unable to break his own walls, to give up his armour. He feels like in that quote, tentatively underlined in light pencil in between the pages of one of his favourite stories by Dostoyevsky, White Nights, his flea-bitten copy, bought for one pound in a ratty bookshop, very much held dear.

“ _The dreamer is not a human being, but a creature of an intermediate sort. For the most part he settles in some inaccessible corner…”_

he recites diligently in his head, and realises it is exactly how he feels now, detached from the natural flowing of life, from these kids, from their activities, from their fun.

Almost out of spite, he rummages in the gravel for one rounder and smoother cobble, bigger than the others, he picks it and places it on the toe of his foot, trying to keep it in balance, which is anything but easy, and then starts to juggle it, in a manner of speaking.

Gravity is not on his side, though, and he finds out how playing with a stupid cobble is even worse than playing with Aleks’ old deflated ball. He is almost past six consecutive keepie-uppies, and he’s pretty sure he has beaten some sort of record (if a record for most keepie-uppies with a coddle were ever to exist), when he feels something hitting his back.

He drops the cobble in the grass with a thud and abruptly turns around, only to find in front of him the small boy he noticed before, who’s gazing at him all wide-eyed. His cheeks are delicately flushed from the cold and his mouth is politely agape.

He appeared out of nowhere, and he has the round, harmonious, precious face of an angel exiled from heaven.

He is wearing one of those heavy jackets that are so popular these days, forest green just like his eyes, blue patches on the elbows, and the cords to tighten the hood all picked and frustratingly bitten at the ends.

“Did I hurt you?” asks the kid in a guilty tone, bringing his hands behind his back and staring awkwardly at the ground, rubbing his football boots together and staining them in grass. “I’m sorry if I hurt you.”

Louis’ eyebrows pull confusedly together, before he notices the football which must have hit him, ended up in a bush next to where he stopped. He suddenly realises what the kid is talking about and how the impression he had about the stranger boy not being able to control a ball mustn’t have been that far from reality.

“Of course you didn’t hurt me,” he snaps, cold and huffy, not to say incredibly bothered by the fact that this kid thinks that being hit by a ball in the back is enough to have him burst into tears like a toddler.  _Please._

Despite Louis’ harshness, the boy doesn’t get perturbed. He lifts his head up and gifts him with a smile this big, with the dimples, the bright green eyes and everything.

“Oh, thank goodness! I’m a bit of a klutz when it comes to football, Zayn and Liam always tell me,” he says in relief, gesturing with his hands in excuse while taking a couple of steps forward to fetch the ball from the bush. He struggles a bit among the twigs, because his arms aren’t long enough to reach the ball, and when he finally resurfaces, even more flushed, dry leaves are stuck in the waves of his ruffled curls.

“So,” he starts, staring at Louis. “Are you James' best friend? He told us he was coming to his house for afternoon tea,” he inquires, hugging the football and rocking on the balls of his feet, smile never fading off his round and rosy face.

Louis glances back, startled, moving his eyes from the curly fluffy hair that frames his forehead, to the expensive coat, unzipped on an original Manchester United shirt which—okay, maybe the kid knows what he’s on about after all— to the black trackies carefully tucked (probably by his mum) into the white thick socks, to the brand football boots. And then he looks down, and all he sees are his battered shoes with odd and grey laces and his ripped and faded jeans, that maybe once fitted him perfectly, but now are just very threadbare and deformed. And then he looks at the boy again. Afternoon tea?

“Don’t be daft,” he says incredulously. Who on earth, just taking in and comparing the two of them, could be so dumb to think they belong to the same world, when they couldn’t be more different?

“And I don’t have any best friends, anyway,” he adds sharply, abandoning every attempt at being polite.

The boy doesn’t lose his composure, once again. He looks down pensively at the football instead, then he places it on the ground and he gives it an hesitant kick, directing it at the best that he can towards Louis, who as a reflex moves on the right and stops it with his instep.

“You can have me, if you want,” says the boy all hopeful, brightening at the sight of Louis’ playing with his football. “I already have Zayn, but I think he likes Liam better,” he adds, a bit more sad, and he looks back at the other two kids, who are loudly laughing and joking together while they wait for him to come back with the ball.

Louis picks at his lips thoughtfully as he takes one moment to inspect the boy. He has yet to decide if this is just one of those stupid dumb rich kids who don’t really have a clue of how the world goes. He looks a bit dumb, to be honest. At least he roots for Manchester United, so he must own a bit of common sense, unlike his friend, the one with the Poyet’s Chelsea jersey who must be really dumb, because only somebody really dumb would openly strut in Manchester clad in the enemy’s flag. He must be looking for trouble, that’s for sure.

In comparison, this one almost seems alright.

“Do you like Blur?” inquires Louis out of the blue. Heneeds to figure him out. Maybe he will find out the kid is not bad at all.

“Who?” questions the boy instead, comically widening his eyes even more, as if it was humanly possible. And okay, apparently there is no hope at _all_.

“Blur,” retorts Louis huffily, teasing the ball tentatively and then starting to juggle, because he can’t help it, and if he has a football in between his feet they systematically stop obeying to his orders and start doing whatever they want. “The _band,”_ he adds with an annoyed snort at the outrage.

“Oh!” exclaims the kid, curving his mouth into a perfect O. “Oh, I know them! My sister and my mum are always listening to them!” He says excitedly, almost proud, and then proceeds to start humming the chorus of _Country House,_ of all songs. Louis lifts his chin up surprised, wondering if the boy wants to do sarcasm or just doesn’t understand what he’s singing, but joins him all the same, in a Pavlov reflex, singing back with the first sincere smile since they started talking now twitching his lips.

They end the song, voices deadening in embarrassment, and Louis flushes and diverts his eyes from the boy, who still looks curiously and admiringly at him owning the ball as if it was glued to his feet.

“Do you want to play with us?” the boy asks, motioning to the goal net where his friends have now taken to do some mild and awkward warm-up exercises.

“No,” utters Louis hurriedly, even though he finds himself hoping his face is betraying how much he would actually like it, to play in a real football pitch, with a professional ball. And then he stops the keepie-uppies, figuring that he should probably set the ball free for the boy, so he can go back to the other two kids. He kicks it towards him in a soft pass, without lifting it from the ground.

Instead of taking the ball and turning on his heels, the small boy blatantly ignores it and gets closer to Louis, smiling.

And then he takes his hand.

His own hand is very cold, because he’s not wearing gloves, and Louis can distinctly feel it through the wool fabric of his old mittens.

“What are you doing,” whispers Louis dumbfounded, looking down at their intertwined hands in surprise.

“I’m taking your hand,” answers the boy, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. And it probably is, only not to Louis. He gets flustered and wriggles out of the hold, annoyed, bending down to take the ball, see as the kid doesn’t seem to be very interested in it anyway.

“Look kid, I changed my mind, I’ll come play with you. I’ll show you how good I am.”

“But I already know that! I saw you when you were playing with that cobble!” Says the other, shaking his head all enthusiastic. He’s quite funny, with those curls that keep on falling on his eyes and pink lips constantly pursed into a smile. “Can you tell me your name, please?” He asks then, a bit more shyly, polite but still eager.

“It’s Louis,” sighs Louis.

“Louis!" He exclaims, delighted. "My name is Harry. I might never get tired of calling you Louis. I really like it. The colour of your eyes, as well,” he adds sincerely, making Louis blush again, just like when Matilde pinches him in the cheek and tells him what an handsome boy he’s making.

He can see the boy growing bolder at Louis’ first shared piece of information, as he starts to ramble, gesturing enthusiastically with an happy glint in his eyes.

“My sister has a ring with a stone of that very colour, you know? My sister Bianca. The one who listens to Blur. It doesn’t really make sense for me to specify this, because I only have one sister anyway. But you couldn’t possibly know, that’s why I specified. Maybe you can meet with her, I think you’re about her age. She is older than me, she’s fourteen. You can be her friend, too! But you can’t kiss her,” says Harry all in one breath, taking on a frown as he finishes his sentence and looks at Louis, who looks back, mouth agape, dazed and at the same time astonished by how this small boy seems to give him all the importance of this world, addressing him almost in a reverent manner, choosing all his words with care.

“You know, you do talk an awful lot, kid,” says Louis amused, gesturing Harry to get headed to the goalmouth, where the other two boys are.

“Oh,” goes Harry, stopping dead on his track. “Sorry,” he stares at the ground, looking hurt.

Louis feels a bit guilty, suddenly conscious of his harsh manners. The last thing he wants is make this small boy cry, because in the end he is only being nice to him and definitely does not deserve being the aim of his constant mistrust for the world.

“Okay, let’s go play alright? Your friends are waiting for you,” mutters Louis, caving. Harry nods frantic like an excited puppy, and despite being a bit more hesitant, he tries to take Louis’ hand once again.

Louis sighs at the stubborn and cold touch of the boy’s hand and slips his own out of the hold for the second time, making that frustrating upset look take place on Harry’s face.

“Your hands are cold,” says Louis as an excuse.

“I think that’s because it’s winter,” states Harry with a teasing giggle, retrieving immediately his happy mood, blowing on his hands and puffing out a cloud of condensation, before rubbing them together, hoping the friction will generate warmth.

Louis considers him for some moments, expectantly. Then he takes off his gloves, which are old and worn out, but still better than nothing, and he hands them to Harry.

“You'll be better off with these,” he says off-handedly, surprising even himself, not for the kindness, because that is carved in his heart, but for the unconditional boldness.

Harry doesn’t say anything, but moves his eyes from Louis, to the gloves in his own hands, to Louis again.

“I can’t. What about you?” He comments, eyebrows knitted together and arched to almost disappear behind the mop of curly hair matted on his forehead.

Louis sighs heavily, once again. He snatches the gloves from Harry and puts them on the boy's hands, struggling just a bit. “I’m all good, don’t worry about me. I’m used to the cold,” he says, as Harry won’t stop looking at him, still not totally convinced.

Louis takes him by the hand then, while he collects the ball with the one that’s not holding Harry's, and drags him to the other side of the football pitch, and because Harry is trailing just behind him, stumbling as he follows Louis, he just can’t see how big the smile on the smaller boy’s lips is.

“This is Louis. He is my friend,” announces Harry proudly once they reach the other two kids—Zayn and Liam, apparently—who cast him a look that makes Louis suddenly stiffen on his spot, as he drops the ball on the ground.

He can almost hear the lecture given by their respective mums, the one about how you should never trust strangers, playing in their heads as they study his presence.

“Hi,” he says sheepishly, waving a hand and trying to look trustworthy as much as you can when your appearance tells exactly who you are and where you come from.

The boy with black hair and dark eyes must sense his discomfort, though, because he regains his composure and he gets close to him, one hand stretched out and offering a smile with pursed lips, a bit strained, that Louis will take anyway.

“Alright Louis, I’m Zayn and this is Liam,” Louis shakes both their hands and wants to laugh disbelievingly at these two boys who must be around his age and already act like two adults, even though they have got all the rights and the privileges not to.

“You wanna play? You can be on my team,” adds Zayn, exchanging another odd look with Liam, that annoys and irritates Louis. He knows they don’t like him, it’s patent in the difference between the gentle and curious glances that Harry casts him and the cold and suspicious ones the other two boys keep saving for him.

“Yeah, sure mate,” he says, attempting a smile.

Zayn glares at him once again, but doesn’t comment. He takes the ball and gestures Louis to follow him on the other side of the pitch.

Louis jumps on his spot to warm up and then does some stretching, just for the sake of it. It’s probably pointless, because from what he has seen he doesn’t think this match will make him spend a lot of energies.

On the other side of the halfway line there are Liam and Harry, who can’t stop fidgeting on his spot, jumping excitedly and clapping his hands.

“I’ll do my best Liam, I promise! Besides, we’re almost balanced today, because Louis is amazing while Zayn sucks!” He screams, all flushed and content.

Zayn frowns at that, looking daggers at Harry before turning towards Louis with a threatening glare. “He’s lying,” he mutters in between gritted teeth.

Louis smirks slyly and gestures him to get started. Zayn kicks off and sprints forward, running confident to the net, despite his movements are a bit hindered by his heavy and expensive shearling coat.

Louis thinks it’s better for him to stay in the back, in defence of the goalmouth, given the fact Zayn seems like he’s going to lose the ball any moment, and he realises that if Liam or Harry (very unlikely) were to steal it and come to him and try to score, he could always snatch it and restart in counter-attack.

Zayn predictably lets Liam take the ball without even fighting for it.

Louis has to admit Liam has a pretty good left foot and manages his way on the pitch, while Harry instead of following his teammate suit in support starts to clap his hands and cheer for him.

“Go Liam! You’ve got this!”

Louis snorts, slightly amused, and pushes forward, ready to oppose Liam, while Zayn stopped on the other side of the pitch and is not even trying to get the ball again, more concerned by the state of his jacket.

Running reveals it to be actually strenuous on the damp grass, so Louis quickly frees himself of his shoes in the run, and is left in his socks, which promptly get damp as they touch the grass, but he doesn’t care, because he’s used to this.

Louis plays always with his right foot and always with no shoes.

When he thinks he’s close enough to Liam, he tries an impromptu and quite sly tackle, but Liam is just as much sly to kick back at Harry, who is as shocked as Louis at having been passed the ball.

“Run to the net Harry!” Screams Liam in an authoritative tone of voice, pointing out Louis’ goalmouth, now uncovered.

Harry starts to run clumsily, dragging the ball along. Louis immediately hauls himself up and moves towards the boy to man mark him. With a small and innocent foul he intercepts him, making him fall.

“Alright, little prince?” He has the time to tease, before finally getting the ball, running to the opposite goalmouth and kicking it easily in the back of the net.

He lifts one fist in the air winningly, and goes to throw himself at Zayn to celebrate the goal. The boy ignores him, though, and runs to the opposite side instead, towards Harry, who is still laying there, on the ground, in the spot where Louis tackled him. He’s holding his leg, face red and flushed and eyes welled up with tears.

Oh.

“You hurt him!” Attacks Zayn in an accusatory tone, kneeling next to Harry and taking him in his arms, while Liam bends down to examine his leg, looking for who knows what. Harry starts to sob more heavily, and Zayn holds him even tighter.

Louis feels a pang of guilt in his stomach at the sight of the boy, so small and desperate on the turf.

“But come on mate, it’s just a scratch,” he tries, rubbing one hand on his neck. He has fallen dozens and dozens of times in his life, and not on a damp and soft field but on the asphalt in the streets, and he has never complained about it, not even when he found himself with bleeding knees and bleeding hands and nobody rushed worriedly to take care of him this way.

“Not your mate,” huffs out Zayn dryly, before pressing one kiss on Harry’s cheek, wet with tears, and whispering words of comfort in his ear.

“He’s a baby! He’s just ten! We’re not playing the bloody World Cup!” he snaps then, turning to cast Louis an irate look.

“I’m—I’m sorry. I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to hurt him.”

Louis thinks he could cowardly run away, as he is used to do, fast, sure that even if they tried they would never be able to catch him. He could leave them behind in the blinking of an eye, he could run away and avoid in the future this neighbourhood of people so rich and so different from him, that he feels like a fish out of the water here anyway.

But despite all his willpower he quite doesn’t manage, not when Harry is looking at him with these disappointed and hurt eyes, lips shaking.

So he drops on his knees with an hesitant air and then kneels a bit closer to the other boy. He clears his throat, trying to sound sure and not to show the second hand embarrassment that he’s trying to fight.

“Alright kid, I’m sorry I hurt you.”

Harry keeps sighing and sobbing so hard that it hurts Louis’ heart, and Zayn still has that murderous expression on his face.

Louis needs to try harder.

“I seriously didn’t want to, but look, you’re so good and strong that tackling you was the only way to stop you!”

Harry lets a giggle escape his mouth in between the tears, and there’s the smallest hint of a dimple making its way on his cheek.

Louis sees a bit of light.

He places one hand on Harry’s wrist, cautiously, and then holds it in between his fingers, which are icy-cold by now.

“But stop crying now, will you?” he pleads, trying a smile.

Harry nods frantically, covering Louis’ hand with his own. Zayn loosens his hold, with reluctance, and Louis dares to wipe away the tears gathered under Harry’s eyes.

“Look, maybe you’ll forgive me now,” he says, and fumbles with the pocket of his trousers, fetching a football card, the George Best one, which is—yeah, one of his most precious treasures.

“You support Manchester United, right? That’s clever. You’re good. Keep this. It’s my present to say sorry that I hurt you,” he declares, all serious, putting the card in Harry’s hand.

“Louis but I don’t need to forgive you, I know it was an accident,” objects Harry with a pout.

“Keep it anyway,” hurries out Louis, before he can change his mind. He’s very surprised at himself with how easily he was ready to give away one of the few nice things he has, when material objects have always been, as sad as it sounds, his biggest source of comfort.

“Are you sure this is mine now?” questions Harry, still doubtful.

“A hundred percent. But please, don’t cry anymore,” tells him Louis, staring at those green eyes.

Surprisingly, Harry doesn’t counter back. He hugs him tight instead, and it’s weird, it’s very much weird, because nobody ever hugs Louis. But it’s also wonderful and warm, and Louis thinks that it would be really nice to be accustomed to hugs, so that you don’t have such an embarrassing reaction when you get one.

Harry is probably the first person to hug him in years, if he thinks about it. Harry smells of stepped on grass and cinnamon and ginger, just like Christmas cookies.

Zayn clears his throat loudly, and that’s Louis’ clue to twist away from Harry’s hold, blushing violently.

“We need to take him back home, or Laure will kill us,” he says plainly, but with the softest tone of voice he’s directed towards Louis, so far. “Harry’s mum. I mean, she will probably kill us anyway,” he adds then, with a sarcastic grimace.

To be fair, Harry is not even bleeding, but Louis can concede him that if he’s not used to smack himself into the ground that must’ve hurt, not to talk about the fright of the impact. So he nods and slides one arm under Harry’s knees, while he wraps the other one around his middle and lifts him up gently.

“Show me the way,” he tells Liam and Zayn, who stare at him astonished for one moment. Then Zayn shrugs, shaking his head, and points him out the other side of the road, where there are all these terraced houses, each surrounded by a big garden.

“That way,” says Zayn, as he starts to walk. Louis follows suit, and Liam is just by his side and keeps pulling funny faces at Harry, to make him laugh. He’s good at that, if Harry’s guffawing is anything to go by.

“Alright Harry?” asks Zayn, looking cautiously right and left to check if there are cars passing, and then motioning them to cross.

“Yeah,” answers simply Harry, without diverting his eyes from Louis. He leans in to rest his head on Louis’ shoulder and hooks his arms around his neck, and Louis tightens his hold on him, looking down and meeting Harry’s eyes, as to reassure him he’s not letting him fall again.

For some reason, Harry’s unconditional trust warms his heart, makes him feel important.

Zayn opens the small gate of one of the houses and leads the way on the pebbled path that goes straight to the entrance door. Although being winter, the garden is well looked-after, the hedges are trimmed and the bare leaves-less trees have this poetic nuance from the veil of frost that wraps around them. In one corner there are some swings and other toys for kids, the path is studded with small lampposts, the facade of the three storey house is almost majestic, with those red bricks, the white windows, the alcoves and the dormers sticking out, protected by heavy curtains.

Louis is still thinking about his ripped jeans, about his shoes spattered with mud that are leaving traces on the ceramic floor of the porch, as he watches Liam and Zayn rub their feet, clad in expensive boots, on the doormat, before ringing the bell.

And then he’s hit by panic, sheer and utter panic, because, seriously, what even is he doing there. It’s so clear he doesn’t belong here, and what does he expect, Harry’s mum to let him inside the house like that? Louis is such a silly boy sometimes.

“Will you manage from now on?” he asks hurriedly as he tries to keep his asthma at bay. What was he thinking. He needs to go now, before they make him.

“What?” they say, in a confused unison.

“I’ve got to go, I gotta go, I’m sorry,” he mumbles, delicately letting Harry down, so that Liam and Zayn can sustain him, one arm each.

Louis covers the path in a rush, pace quick, so he can disappear before Harry’s mum opens the door.

It’s right this way, if you think about it. Zayn and Liam can blame this kid, a wanderer, probably, who hurt Harry and then cowardly ran away.

Because Louis _is_ a bit of a coward, in the end.

“We’ll see each other soon, Louis?” he hears Harry scream from afar. Louis feels a tug at his heart and pulls his lips together.

He keeps walking, gloves-less hands in his pockets, and once again he never looks back.

 


	3. Still January

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's some tension.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting this one early since I won't likely have my laptop for the rest of the week! I hope to be on time with the next one :)

_Manchester, 15 th of January 1999_

 

When Louis struggles to put his life together, he tidies up the old drinks cabinet.

You could say that in some sense the creaky piece of furniture makes a cocoon for his life, or at least a small part of it (but a small _important_ part) and so, according to symmetry, it might give the illusion that he has it together, when he actually really doesn’t.

It’s something that he does quite often, and as much as it should probably bring him to do a lot of questioning about what his life has gotten to, he’s almost sure he won’t have the answers, so he sticks unperturbed to this innocent and methodical activity, that at least keeps his mind busy and allows him to abstract himself from the world to maybe give some order to it.

The cabinet is one of those made of a dark and polished wood, probably mahogany, probably straight from the 30s, and it was already in the house, in that very spot, when he, Rebecca, and Julie moved in about three years ago now. It has a flap that you can also lock and Louis decided to seize the key the moment he busted his mother rummaging with no scruple in the pockets of his trousers, looking for some coins, and put every belonging he has in the compartment.

To add insult to injury, (or to ugliness, if you want), the compartment is also all lined in this stained and worn out red velvet. Louis finds the whole thing god-awful and extremely out of place in the aseptic and untrimmed room, but he still kind of grew fond of this piece of furniture, like one of the few things that are there and will stay like that, steady and safe, it doesn’t matter what happens.

He still finds amusing what the purpose of that cabinet is, since, given his mother’s tendencies, it soon stopped containing alcohol. The first thing Louis put in it was his metal tin, the one with danish houses pictured on the lid. It used to contain butter biscuits, but now is just full of his savings. When he bought the record player, with a little extra help from Bruno because he’s just that nice, he put it inside the cabinet as well.

It's just a small record player, second or even third hand, bought through Brian, the guy who works at the Vinyl Exchange and whom Louis soon befriended, given as he spends most of his days wandering among the shelves of the shop, looking for some bargain, seizing the listening stations and always, always putting on the same Joy Division album (which is never reduced and therefore he can never afford), talking animatedly for hours about britpop and indie rock.

Brian is an okay guy, by the way. He’s kind of weird, but at least he agrees with Louis that Blur are better than Oasis, and he has never threw him out of the shop (unlike Burt, the stinky man that does the morning shifts) not even when, after hours of aimlessly loafing about and bothering the customers and nosing in their purchases, Louis systematically gets out empty-handed.

He remembers well the moment he brought the record player home, when Aleks helped him carve the wood and make a hole for the cable with the hacksaw borrowed from his father. The memories come back to his mind when he sees that inaccurate and crooked hole as he pulls out all his vinyls so he can dust them, as well as the inside of the cabinet. He wipes the surface of every single album with a damp rag and then counts them, as if he doesn’t perfectly know they are twenty seven.

He’s rather content with his collection, considering he started to put it together two mere years ago. To be completely honest, though, some vinyls were inherited from other people, like Rebecca’s old Rubber Soul and a couple of Chet Baker’s albums that probably belonged to his granddad.

He takes one and puts it on, to accompany his work, and soon the syncopated sounds of a jazzy trumpet stump on the floor like stubborn hailstone at the end of summer. They bite the walls like a hammer and then sprint up, getting free and building rhythms now lyrical, now wild and almost devilish.

He got the two vinyls when his grandmother died and he, Julie and Rebecca went to clean and vacate the house she was living in. Rebecca told him he could take something to keep as a memory if he wanted, all brusque and cold, while she filled big black trash bags with years and years of the most disparate stuff, without looking at it twice and without tears of nostalgia welling up in her eyes.

“Oi Louis, are you busy right now?” a voice interrupts his thoughts.

Louis had already sensed the noise of someone walking up the stairs drifting in from the door he purposely left open, so that if Rebecca deigned to come back home he wouldn’t have to interrupt what he was doing just to go and open her.

It’s not Rebecca, though. What a surprise.

Aleks enters the room without even knocking, like he does, and he straight away launches himself on the couch, plopping down with a tired grunt, worn out by climbing all those stairs (he’s always been unfit), and dropping on the floor the new football that he always brings with him, because he doesn’t trust leaving it around. Which, considering what kind of people live here, it's admittedly pretty wise.

Louis, sitting on the floor in front of the cabinet, legs crossed, doesn’t even turn around, but rather keeps on dusting each vinyl with a busy air. 

When he’s done he puts them back each time with a different order, based on a criterion every week new, decided on the spot, and that gets always more creative and absurd as he goes on with this soothing ritual. Today for example he’s going for the colour of the cover, from dark to lighter.

“Sort of,” he answers Aleks’ question absent-mindedly, lost in thought. “I need to finish with this, but I’m not working until seven tonight.”

His answer picks up Aleks’ ears right away. The boy suddenly stands up, steadying himself, and Louis can feel his glare fixed on the back of his neck. He doesn’t stop, though, far more interested in a suspicious stain on the top left corner of _Blur,_ that he scrapes off with annoyance, as he starts to hum to himself a song he already heard somewhere he doesn’t recall precisely and that doesn’t seem it’s going to get out of his head anytime soon.

“Billy insists he wants to play a match of footie, but we’re only seven for now. I think by now he managed to find somebody else, do you want to join in?” asks Aleks, pursing his lips into an hopeful grimace.

“But if he managed to find the other players you don’t actually need me,” retorts Louis easily, rolling his eyes and keeping on doing his things.

It’s not like him denying a football match, that has to be said, but lately he’s never in the mood to play, or to see the other lads in general.

Julie’s call surely didn’t help to the cause, nor Rebecca’s recent behaviour and the fight they had a couple of weeks ago, that still haunts him, because she hasn’t come back home in days and hasn’t spoken to him in much longer.

But it’s not only that.

It’s all a combination of things, that swamped him like an avalanche, that has a sigh dark like famine slipping out of his mouth, dark like the winter nights, that it would be better to keep inside, but sorry, he just doesn’t manage.

“Oh, come on Louis, what has gotten into you? We need you there if we want to play at least decently, you know that!”

Louis knits his eyebrows together, changing his expression into a frown that should disguise how much he actually feels flattered by Aleks’ words. He bends his head a little, to hide the flush that colours his cheeks, putting the last album in its place and locking the flap of the cabinet.

He should know better than falling for that.

“It’s...you know, it’s not a great moment. I don’t really feel like playing.”

“But you could distract yourself a bit, Louis! Not stay in here and always think and mope!”

Then he’s forced to turn around towards the other boy, and meet his expectant and knowing look. In the complete silence he can already perceive the conviction tactic take shape in his friend’s head, and decides that he doesn’t want to spend the next twenty minutes arguing on matters that he wants to keep to himself, being begged only to be forced to cave anyway.

He knows he doesn’t have many alternatives now that Aleks is here, and he knows even better how much the boy can be a tough nut.

“Fine,” he sighs resignedly.

He already kind of feels he’s going to regret these words, but he still doesn’t know how much.

Aleks comically and winningly lifts one fist in the air at that and even deigns to stand up from the couch to haul Louis up in turn, unable to contain his excitement.

“Awesome, but tell Billy you are in my team, alright?” he says already trying to cover his own back, speaking all stuttering and frantic.

Louis just sighs again as he puts his jacket on and tastes the pockets to check if he’s taken everything with him, before kicking the football outside the door. Aleks follows suit, and keeps mumbling with an unjustified buzz, as if they didn’t play almost every week.

“We’re gonna smash them, Louis, we’re gonna smash them for sure this time. I’ve also got Jeremy and Brandon in the team, we only need to find somebody who’s not too shit to cover the goalmouth,” he rattles off.

Louis nods absentmindedly here and there, every time Aleks pauses to take a breath, letting the ball roll down the stairs and challenging it, trying to outrun it.

It’s always been an open question, the one between him and the ball. An argument never closed.

As they reach the ground floor, the rest of the kids are already gathered in the small yard, that almost can’t contain them all. Billy stands in the centre of the circle of boys, as the leader, because he’s the oldest. Some of them sit to the side, passing a cigarette back and forth and acting all tough as they try not to cough too much.

“Oi, Louis! What an honour,” the boy addresses him, hinting a derisory courtesy, which is not actually that mean, as soon as he spots him and Aleks exiting the door of the building. “You finally decided to drop your precious books and join us?”

Louis approaches them without a word, forcing a smile on his lips, his cheekbones almost hurting from the effort, and then bumps his fist with Billy’s one, stretched out in invitation.

Billy is one year older than Louis. He’s got squared shoulders and a buzz cut, two thin and knobbly legs that stick out of his baggy camouflage shorts, too big, that in this courtyard of poverty and struggle are as suitable in January as they are in July.

His face is studded with scratches and scars, as well as being constantly contorted into a grimace that lets you know how you should probably think twice before messing with him.

Not Louis, though, whom Billy has always respected someway, albeit with diffidence and scorn, because Louis is and has always been too much of a stranger to this group of kids whose normality is to steal here and there, to smoke, to scare other children and vandalise parks and buildings.

“Huh,” hums Louis reluctantly, shrugging, as all the eyes are fixated on him.

“He said he’s on my team,” blurts out Aleks when Louis doesn’t add anything, to set the record straight. He doesn’t dare looking at Billy in the eyes, though, because he already knows he won’t like this.             

“Oi, what’s this all about?” utters Billy in a threatening voice, staring at Louis and Aleks, whose push of bravado must be evidently vanished since he backed off considerably, now hiding behind Louis, every trace of that audacity he displayed with that statement deadened already. _Wimp._

“Well, you know how it is, first come…” says Louis casually, snorting just a bit. He even avoids to roll his eyes.

He came down to play footie in the end, not to join stupid arguments, that for those he might as well have stayed at home.

Billy crooks his mouth into an amused grin, because Louis is the only one who allows himself to be so upfront with him and he likes that. He brings one hand to rest on his hip as with the other he snatches a cigarette from Riley, who’s sitting close to him by the flowerbed, to take a long and excruciating drag.

“I see how it is,” he puffs out after a moment, together with a thick cloud of smoke. “If so, you also get the new one in the deal. He just moved here, tragic story his, from stars to stables and everything. He’s a bit scared, the poor kid, aren’t you Cody?” he caws, gesturing to one short boy with green eyes, who stays there, a bit set aside, nodding frantically, quite terrorised.

“It’s Cory,” squeaks the boy, clearly already intimidated.

“Yeah, whatever.” Billy stretches out one arm to offer the cigarette to Louis, with a wink and a smug smirk.

“I’m good, thanks,” declines Louis, staring at Billy right in the eyes. The boy snorts and takes another deep drag only to puff out a cloud of smoke right in Louis’ face and managing to keep that smirk of challenge mixed with annoyance and despise on his lips, a smirk which Louis figures is saved for him only.

“Of course,” he says dryly. “Great goalkeeper our Cody, by the way. He’s ready for the World Cup and all!” he exhales further, sharp and derogatory on purpose, stepping on the butt of the cigarette with the worn out sole of his shoe and causing a general laugh and the consequent blushing of the cheeks of the above-mentioned Cory, who bends his head down in humiliation.

Louis tries to give him a smile of sympathy that goes lost, unnoticed.

Smug from gaining the attention of the whole group, Billy swipes the football away from Aleks, who apparently doesn’t have a relevant role in the dynamics anymore, despite usually who brings the ball at least gets to be the captain of one team (although that only applies when Billy’s not around, because when he is, you have to do it his way, and in this case he has already decided his opponent captain will be Jeremy).

“Let’s get in the street already. We’re gonna do this proper or we’re not gonna do it at all!” roars Billy, leading them outside the courtyard.

In all truth, everybody knows you can’t do things properly in the street at all.

The goalmouths are made by two rocks each, always the same ones, taken from one of the gardens on the other side of the road. They have to put them back every time so nobody will notice. A hole in the asphalt represents the centre spot of the pitch, which by the way is an extremely shrunk pitch, even for just a match of futsal.

It’s really not that hard for Louis finding himself to dream about that beautiful pitch those boys have right on the other side of their house in Didsbury Park, and it’s even less hard being a lot jealous of it.

He doesn’t even know why but he’s already in front of Billy, face to face on the centre spot where Jeremy, the captain of their team should be, and it becomes clear how it’s all on Billy and Louis now, a silent but patent rivalry, like Maradona with Pelè, or maybe even more tragic than that.

The kick-off it’s on Billy’s team, not because of some draw but just because it’s Billy’s team, and for some unspoken rule his team always gets whatever Billy wants, be that the first kick, the best side of the pitch or the best players.

Louis is fine with it, though, and he doesn’t flinch. He just fixes the beanie on his fringe and doesn’t even get rid of his jacket to be more free in his movements, because he’s better than him anyway.

Somebody whistles tentatively, and Billy soon tries to fake Louis out and swipe the football away, but it’s always too easy for Louis, one sprint forward it’s all it takes, and the ball it’s his already. In the span of one minute flat he’s right figured how things are going to go, and since it’s not like him to try and beat a dead horse, because then the fun would be spoilt, he passes the ball to Aleks, who struggles a bit, taken by surprise, but then someway manages to catch himself and restart the game, smiling at Louis gratefully.

Louis goes back to the defence, watching the lads play. He goes down on the pitch until he’s basically by the lines that mark the box, which are all crooked, drawn on the asphalt with a white chalk mischievously stolen from the class by somebody whose best talent mustn’t be art for sure.

The only one left behind is Cory, who’s trying to cover the net. Louis nods at him with the head, but the kid doesn’t acknowledge him, busier standing still with not much to do, swinging mechanically on his knees with a focused and borderline scared expression painted on his young face. He really doesn’t look older than eight, but maybe that’s because of his build and how his clothes are engulfing him, making him seem minuscule.

“Alright?” asks Louis getting closer, as on the other side of the pitch some turmoil arises. From what he can make from the screams somebody must have tackled someone else and now a scuffle is underway, with blows and kicks and insults being exchanged.

The lad nods dismissively, keeping his stare on where the action is going on, on the football, even though it rolled away on the side of the road, neglected and forgotten in favour of bunch of blows.

Louis snorts loudly and turns around, because he tries to always be nice, but he’s not one to have a small talk at all costs. In fact, he’d rather not speak much.

But then the boy looks at him, frowning.

“Billy is right, you know? I’m rubbish. But I can’t let them score because otherwise they told me they’re going to beat me up,” he says, knitting his thick eyebrows together with worry as one thick tear rolls down his cheek.

Louis purses his lips into a thin line and waves a hand in the air, indulgent. He knows how things work here. Billy tried to do this to him, too, when he arrived in the block. To scare him off, to make clear who’s in charge. Not that he let him, but he knows how they are and he hates it, it makes his blood boil with anger to witness it.

It didn’t work with Louis, yes because he didn’t let him, but also because Billy envies his football talent, which Louis wears like armour. Not everybody has that.

“Listen, don’t fret. With that attack I doubt they will be in your box that soon, as you can see most of them are rubbish, too.”

The boy snickers a bit and Louis has to lick his lips to stop a grin from twitching his lips.

“But if they do... I’ll help you, alright?” he says instead.

The boy nods again and even tries a smile, even though when he goes back to staring at the backcourt his face is not less worried.

In the meanwhile the scuffle looks like it’s deadening and everybody seems to agree on how it wasn’t Billy the one to pancake-flip Aleks, who probably just tripped on a hole in the asphalt. Of _course._

Everyone seems to agree just because they fear Billy, even though and in all honesty it can’t be denied that the asphalt is studded in holes. 

Now they’re trying to start back on the match, cursing the unusable street, and Louis figures he might as well go all the way up and help his team. Aleks passes him the ball as soon as he sees him, and Louis gets away from Riley’s marker and runs left, fast, to the opposite goalmouth (set of cobblestones, actually).

He doesn’t manage to score, however, because he’s stopped by the sound of an horn going off at them. He comes to a halt and everybody groans in complaint, because there’s a car that needs to pass.

Riley and Aleks in an automated and practiced reflex move the cobbles from the street, and everyone brushes on the side so the guy can go through, only after flipping them the bird, boldly shielded by the car window.

“The story of our lives,” snorts Aleks, meekly moving the cobbles again to re-create the goalmouth, and maybe, _maybe_ cheating a bit, so that Billy’s team’s one is a bit larger.

“Fuck, there’s no way I can keep playing like this,” mutters Billy, kicking out of frustration Alek’s football, which ends up under a car parked not far away.

It is not a surprise that Louis finds himself once again caressing with his mind the pitch at the Didsbury Park, that expanse of green grass that can’t be that big, but to Louis looked infinite and wonderful, like an enchanted meadow.

When things are his, like books and music, or some thoughts he builds, head under the pillow at night and lights turned off, he doesn’t really like to share. He would very much like if his favourite bands were his and nobody else’s, and he would also like if he was the only one who got to read some books, because he’s sure a lot of people don’t understand _at all,_ and that’s such a waste, isn’t it?

But sometimes sharing means making these things a bit more real. Like the pitch, for example. He would like for it to be his secret place, but to put it to use he needs to bring the others if he wants to play a match.

Now, if Louis were good at foreshadowing the consequences of his own actions, what he says wouldn’t slip out of his lips at all.

“Listen guys, maybe I know where we can play in peace,” he blurts out, and it’s too late to take it back.

Everybody is looking at him uncertain and almost dazed. Instead of explaining and having to go through a thousand questions, Louis takes the ball from Riley, who stained his shorts with mud as he tried to fetch it from under the car, and leads the way for this unlikely group of kids.

In the back of his mind, he knows this is not a good idea. But then again, the feeling of running on that pitch had been so special to Louis, and he was looking forward to try it another time, like in a more serious match.

Like it _meant something._

They’re going through the same streets Louis did the first time on his own. This time he actually pays attention to the things they encounter and learns about a piece of his city so very new to him, where there are so many cars you can’t count them, and the park stands out with its lights, still or darting, while all along the road the massive buildings spark and look like troops of formidable knights, so much bigger than him, who’s just a lonely wanderer, a soldier of Manchester, who almost doesn’t recognise his town.

He can hear the others murmur, sceptical, and then suddenly whisper excitedly as they too finally take in the big park on the horizon, with the goalmouths and the impeccable nets and the grass well mowed.       

“What the hell is even this place?” whistles Aleks lowly.

Louis smiles proudly as they approach it and the kids disperse themselves on the field, pointing out right, left and centre, giving each other their positions on the pitch.

He’s happy he managed to blow their mind, even Billy’s.

The boy grips Jeremy- who’s already put the ball on the ground and is pushing Aleks back towards the goalmouth- by the arm, and stops him.

“Wait. Let Louis do the captain,” he says, meeting Louis’ glance and giving him a smug smirk. Louis stares back at him confusedly, looking for that lampoon note of mockery that goes with his every sentence and that he surprisingly doesn’t find.

He shrugs then, and he positions himself just in front of Billy, Aleks’ football in between them.

“Captain or not, we’re going to destroy you either way,” utters Louis, rubbing his hands together to warm them up a bit and then slapping them on his thighs. Billy has got that jeering expression on his face now, of annoyed respect, of awareness, that Louis is not like them, not like everybody else, that he doesn’t cave to his overbearing and aggressive mannerism, to his need to boss everyone around, he’s not scared, he will never be.

And then his expression hardens all of a sudden, as soon as he lifts his head up and stares at something just over Louis’ shoulder.

He pushes Louis aside, brusque, and takes some steps forward, sticking his chest out threateningly.

“Oi, are you looking for trouble? You’ve got to clear the fuck _away_ ,” Louis hears him yell to somebody, and he screeches internally.

He turns, and feels his body freeze, grin ebbing away from his lips as he makes out the familiar faces of Zayn Harry and Liam, who are walking along the sideline, chatting and laughing as they make their way on the pitch. There is another boy with them, he’s pale and ginger and looks older than them. He walks clumsily, arms wrapped around a leather football, perfect and pristine the way it should be.

“Didn’t you hear me? Go away, we were here first!” grits out Billy provokingly when he sees the four of them stepping on the pitch anyway, careless of his yells. Louis from that far lifts one arm up and tries to wave, to sign them to go away, but they don’t seem to notice.

That’s maybe also because the rest of Billy’s group has gone up to them and encircled them, all lined up to back their leader.

For the second time, Louis senses the danger and can't bring himself to run away, even though that would be wise of him.

He gets to the circle, at his own risk and peril, aware that this is all his fault and it would be his fault if Billy and the others made harm to these four kids who instead don’t have any fault at all, who only want to play in their park. Because it’s _theirs_ , and unlike them they have every right to claim it.

The more he gets closer the more his stomach cringes at the sight of how small they are, not in the height, but in the behaviour, in the stance, in the faces so young and smooth, so _loved,_ not marked by living in the streets or in families which, of the whole concept, only have the name. In the faces rosy and not scarred, opposed by the deep cut on Billy’s left eyebrow, by Riley’s bruised cheekbone from when his father beat him last week, and in the eyes politely wide open in genuine confusion.

“It’s not like it’s yours, there’s enough room for everybody,” fires Liam bravely, with the tone of voice of someone who knows he’s saying something reasonable, as he arches his eyebrows in dismay.

Louis soon notices the shift in Billy’s attitude at the reply he wasn’t expecting. The boy goes all stiff and takes one step forward, towering over Liam with his squared shoulders and his squat and broad chest.

“Well, aren’t you a toughie! If you think it’s gonna work with me, just watch,” he hisses, pointing one finger against Liam’s thorax with force and making him step back, but only the tiniest bit. “You don’t talk to me like that. You think you own the world just because daddy buys you whatever you ask him?” goes on Billy without hesitation, venomous and singsonging, causing the other kids to burst into a cold laugh.

Then Billy grips in a fist the collar of Liam’s jacket and yanks it with less vigour of what he’s capable of, which is still enough to make the other boy stumble.

Louis can see the slightly scared look on his face and on the ginger boy’s one as well. He presses himself against Zayn’s back, who has a wry light in his eyes as he drapes one arm around Harry’s shoulders, pulling him back protectively.

Louis lays eyes on Harry for the first time, looking carefully for any trace of fright, but in vain. He seems startled, maybe surprised. Confused, at best, frown only slight.

It’s enough for Louis to decide he should intervene, and maybe try to mitigate Billy.

“Come on, leave them alone,” he commands Billy, harpooning him by his elbow as the other looks at him as if he doesn’t recognise him. “They’re just kids, can’t you see?” Louis tries again, tugging at Billy’s arm and turning around all the same to give Liam and Zayn a subtle glance that he hopes makes them realise how it would be safer not to utter another word and get away quickly rather than stay there and let Billy think they want to pick a fight at all costs.

Zayn looks back with eyes hard and judging but doesn’t say anything, giving Louis a small imperceptible nod.

The one to speak, instead, is Harry.

The small boy shakes off his surprised silence as he notices Louis and widens his eyes, freeing himself from Zayn’s hold and taking one step towards him.

“Hi!” he says, gifting Louis with a smile that he doesn’t deserve, and which for that reason he doesn’t manage to give back. “Do you want to play with us? Maybe we’re enough to play a proper match?”

He sounds excited, happy. He sounds as he looks, and he looks warm, spotless and delightful.

Louis gapes and stares at him bewildered, then looks at Zayn, who’s trying to pull Harry back, then moves his eyes on Billy, who reciprocates the glare, confused and growing irated.

“You know them?” he asks dryly, mouth distorted into a grimace, cracking his fingers and then closing them into a fist.

 _There we go,_ thinks Louis, flushing and taking a long breath in, his hands still curled into the crook of Billy’s elbow, his eyes that move from one group of kids to the other.

And then it’s like in the deep silence, in which you can hear the cold wind cut through the blades of thin grass, in the dull and wintery silence, he can listen to the thoughts shaping in the head of each one of them.

In Harry’s head, who looks at him still content, in Liam and Zayn’s head, who after this are even more wary of him, in the heads of the boys from the block, who have always known how Louis never wanted to be one of them, but from there to mingle with the mummy’s boys?

And then in Billy’s head, and his thoughts don’t even need interpretation, they’re all written on his face, and he looks ready to give him a punch at the first wrong word to leave Louis’ mouth.

_Think quickly._

He realises, always too late, that he should have thought about consequences before.

“No,” is all he says, and it’s an imperceptible whisper, a mild rustle, because he’s so, so ashamed. Because he is a traitor, and it’s not hard to realise it, he can read it in Harry’s eyes, which shut down like the lights in the streets when the sky becomes pink and the morning comes.

Billy looks at him pointedly, but just for another brief moment, and then decides to ignore him, going back to focus on Liam.

“Go the fuck away. Or else,” he repeats like a litany, but his threats are still deprived of actions and still don’t seem to scare them enough.

“Let’s take their ball,” somebody suggests from the back, from the anonymity that comes from staying behind the front line, and of course it generates hums of approval. Billy smirks, evidently considering it a good idea, and takes a step towards the boy with red hair, who’s holding the football. 

“Good one. Give me the football,” he orders authoritative to the kid, who could actually be older than him, but standing in front of Billy like this he looks like the lamb facing the wolf in that old tale for kids. He makes himself small, without leaving the ball, as Liam, who in between the four of them is the tallest and broadest, tries to get between them, to get a hold of the situation.

“I’m telling you by hook, give me the football,” insists Billy, giving hints he’s losing his patience. Riley and Brandon step forward and go behind the four boys, assuming an intimidatory stance.

“Do not listen to him Ed, it’s not fair,” says Liam stubbornly, addressing his friend.

He’s brave, Liam, and unwary. He’s brazen and reckless, or maybe he doesn’t know what he’s putting himself and his friends through. In him Louis sees the same boy who was sporting the Chelsea jersey in the middle of Manchester, the jacket forgotten on the ground when outside it’s minus two, and he cannot do anything but admire him.

Billy snorts at that, mimicking a mocking “ _it’s not fair”_ and gesturing Brandon and Riley to go on. The two guys hit Ed’s arm and snatch the ball easily, among the entertained laughs of the other boys.

“Give him that back! It’s ours, give it back!” protests Liam, now crimson in the face from anger and agitation.

“I knew I should have stayed home,” whines Ed, the ginger kid, as he nervously rubs a hand on his cheek, a scared grimace still planted on his face.

“If you don’t clear out right now I’ll have them take care of you as well,” adds Billy hostile, piercing them with his dark eyes.

Louis holds his breath in tension, recollecting all the times Billy started scuffles that always ended up with unpleasant implications. He knows how Billy never splits hairs. He also knows about the knife he keeps hidden in between the belt and the fabric of his camouflage trousers and that he’s not scared to put into use, be it only to frighten.

And he’s sure if he pulled that out it would frighten Harry and his friends quite badly.

They need to _go_.

He widens his eyes in alarm, searching for Zayn’s ones, who looks back with lips pursed, Harry back in his arms.

 _Go,_ he mouths at him discretely, hoping he will get it. _Trust me, go._

Zayn nods, after looking at them in blatant disgust, and then bravely slides behind Liam.

“Let’s go, Li,” he murmurs, gripping him by the arm and tugging him along as he takes some steps back. “We’re going,” he says again, not scared of looking at Billy straight in the eyes. “We’re going, but don’t think you’ll get away with this. Everyone can be this bold when it’s ten versus four,” he utters in a sharp cutting tone, manners and air of a fully grown man, of a stubborn prince.

Billy snorts and rolls his eyes, making a reverential bow at the kids, who are already giving him their back.

“Say hi to Her Majesty for me!” he yells, eliciting an outburst of giggles from the others and discomfort from Louis, who shifts his weight from one foot to the other, torturing his lower lip in between two fingers, ashamed, guilty and ashamed of himself, ashamed and dirty, ashamed and helpless.

There is a ping of silence, only filled by a voice in Louis’ head that tells him to go after them, to see if they’re fine, to make sure, to apologise.

“Stupid snotty kids,” utters then Billy irately, turning to them and flashing an odd glance to Louis, almost challenging him to say something, to bicker, to get indignant. It’s an expectant glance, that spurs him to take a side, to make clear what spot he’s in.

Before he can say anything, Aleks boldly takes the ball Riley and Brandon stole from Ed and puts it on the centre mark painted on the turf.

“So? Are we wasting time talking or can we finally play?” asks Aleks out of the blue, unaware of the tension now electric between Louis and Billy.

The latter seems to shake off of  his anger because he takes the ball from the boy and gestures the others to take their spot on the pitch.

“You’re right. Let’s play!”

Louis doesn’t move, feeling still too uncomfortable, feeling like he has betrayed Harry Zayn and Liam when he had to protect them. But it’s not like he had to, right? He has nothing to do with them. By nature, he should laugh at their scared face and enjoy the proper expensive football and the pitch.

So, how is it that he can’t?

“Wouldn’t it be better to go away? What if they call somebody?” he tries, and doesn’t even know what it is that he wants to accomplish. His words scrape the air and he just wants to run away from this pitch, where he feels the guilt burning through his body.

“What if? _What if?_ ” mocks him Billy. “What has gotten into you Tomlinson? Scared of a couple of mums in high waisted jeans and sneakers?” he says coldly, knowingly.

Louis blushes, because despite his interior conflict he doesn’t like to appear weak, weaker than he is.

“Fuck right off,” he replies tightly, and Billy smirks and kicks eagerly the football, which ends up in the field nearby.

“The team who loses has to beat good the Smiths’ children from the tenth floor,” he decides, and everyone obviously cheers.

Louis feels foul and nauseous and only wants to run away, all the sheer happiness at the prospect of playing real football drained who knows where, the legs weak, the face pale, all the thoughts that who knows why go to Harry’s hurt face.

He forces himself to kick the ball, almost mechanically, and Billy never diverts his despising stare from him the whole match.

 

-

 

They win, so at least Louis won’t have to beat anybody, a thing that Billy is instead well happy to comply to.

 

-

 

_Manchester, 17 th  of January 1999_

 

Louis is by now immune to Rebecca’s tears.

There was a time, that his mind has let become fuzzy and blurred on purpose— because it was only harbinger of more sorrowful things—when he used to see her crouched on the couch, always the same one of this house where they’ve been forced into, surrounded by damp tissues which kept falling on the floor at every sobbing start she gave, and feel his heart just break.

It was still too hard for him to understand the reasons and the psychology behind the discouragement and paralysis that come from seeing your own parent just stay there, vegetate, still and helpless, instead of making herself stronger for her children, instead of fighting, instead of standing up to start all over again.

Still too hard, when she doesn’t even have the strength and the will to get up from the couch at all, let alone to pick up the pieces of her own crumbled persona and put them back together.

Julie, as the oldest offspring, had to abruptly get used to this. It took her the time of a resigned sigh and she was faced with the shock of having to crash all of a sudden with the responsibilities of the adult age, which a struggling and irreversibly broken mum had already set aside.

For Louis, instead, it started with that gradual realisation which makes room in your head step after step, and then hits you hard, with no mercy, framed by all the feelings that naturally go with seeing a person dear to your heart slip away from your arms, witnessing to her painful wilting and crushing and becoming nothing _._

For Louis it was the disappointment in seeing her burst into tears with no apparent reason and not being able to ignore it, to ignore Julie’s dry and annoyed voice commanding him not to give her all this attention, not to make her feel more important than what she deserved.

It was holding back his _own_ tears, which relentlessly pushed to come out, it was the need to lock himself in his room, alone, to crawl under the comforter and stifle them in the pillow, to wrap his arms around himself and just _cry_ until consuming them.

And that was the easy part. Easy to accept, when he was alone and could hide and disguise the problems, easier than suffering the humiliation of entering the school’s door and hearing all sort of names being derisively yelled at him.

_Son of a demented. Son of a touched. Son of a destabilised._

Easier than going through the courtyard, head bent, and not utter a word in class, silently alienating himself from the rest of the kids. It was easier than dealing with the shame and the embarrassment of having to justify his mother’s absence from the parent’s meeting with the teachers, making up excuses he knew nobody would fall for.

And like this it became a lot more than just sufferance, it became the situation taking away Louis’ life from him, seizing it and ripping it. It became having to drop out of school, having to tell the news to Mrs. Graham, the English teacher, his favourite. She had been almost a mother to him in those few years, more than Rebecca has ever been in a lifetime.

It became thanking her for all the things she did for him, all the things she taught him, for instilling into him the passion for literature and poetry, in a bittersweet farewell.

But all the same it was also pursing his lips as he had to refuse her help, the suggestion to consider some medical treatment, some psychiatric rehabilitation clinic, which mere hint made the blood boil over in his veins, because as much as he really hated Rebecca—yes, he had to come to terms with this painful realisation—he would never betray her that way. They would never, him and Julie, leave their family to the mercy of the child welfare, allow them to scatter them around like objects or unwanted puppies from a too numerous brood.

He doesn’t know if it would have been better than what remains, better than what he feels when he sees her there, doubled over her lap, alternating agonising sobs with moaning screams, which is only sheer and helpless nihilism. It’s not even making the effort to keep a stiff upper lip anymore, when he’s not ever been really good at hiding his feelings, and when there’s absolutely no trace of that initial compassion or the following anger and annoyance. Not anymore.

There’s just emptiness, and he doesn’t know what to do with all this empty room that, for some odd paradox he doesn’t get to comprehend, occupies with insolence all the space in the drawer with the label ‘Rebecca’ in his heart.

There is emptiness now that he hears her whining from the stairs—because the door, needless to say, is wide open—as he comes back home from the restaurant after buying some groceries for dinner with the money he made from tips (Matilde called him to wait tables, bless her) and after collecting the mail from the mailbox on the ground floor. Emptiness, as he browses quickly through the letters and he spots a bill, a payment advice for the rent, which is such a recurring appointment that there’s absolutely nothing to be shocked by, and emptiness when he sees a letter addressed to him and reads that the sender is Julie.

Louis looks daggers and fire at it hoping it could burn just from that. He looks at it with a truce and contrived stare, as if it was the cause of all the plagues in the world, and then he tears it multiple times and carelessly throws the pieces of paper on the floor, watching them with a grimace as they briefly float irreverently in the air like little boat sails.

Julie seems to have the power to make him feel weak and defenceless, to make him feel alone. To make him realise how inadequate he is, and wonder what the hell is he doing.

She doesn’t even need to be there to do just so, and maybe that’s the trick.

Her voice, her handwriting on the address of a letter he doesn’t want to read are enough, and he already feels hit, defied, useless.

“W-what are you doing?”

Louis startles and turns abruptly to see that Rebecca is up now, leaning on the doorframe, red in the face, and her voice is tangled and sloppy and the words she makes out barely distinguishable.

She’s drunk. Again.

Louis knows what he’s supposed to do. He’s done it multiple times. He should try to put her to bed, give her something to calm her down, ignore her whining cries of sufferance because there’s no point in trying to find what she wants or to fix her when she doesn’t even know where do her tears come from, and Louis’ is done with trying to do it for her.

“Why are you putting me through this again? I’m not strong enough,” he whispers instead, almost brokenly, and he doesn’t even know why is he looking for discussion when she’s not even able to put two words together without slurring.

She looks pointedly at him, eyes veiled in annoyance. “This has—“ she abandons herself on the couch, the art she masters more finely “-has nothing to do with you,” she hiccups weakly.

“I’m not strong enough,” Louis squeaks again, ever so low. Lost.

“Nobody is asking you anything, Louis,” she utters tiredly, and it’s so lacking of any trace of warmth that Louis feels his insides break. “You know what? Go away. Leave, just like everybody else!” she’s yelling now, and it’s anger the one arising in her voice. “It will surely be easier!”

Her frown deepens, and she pants expectantly, challengingly, almost if she’s daring Louis not to turn on his heels and run away from the raging mess that she is.

And who’s Louis to pretend he has the fortitude to accept her physical and metaphorical slaps a minute more?

“Maybe I’ll do it for real! I’ll show you easier!” he yells back, albeit he’s desperately trying to restrain himself from playing her game.

“Then do it!” she spits angrily.

It will be easier, she says and sure it would be. She doesn’t understand why Louis would choose the hardest path, and right now he doesn’t either. She should ask herself why does everyone end up leaving her, that she should do. But she has never believed she was in the wrong, and she won’t start now.

“Fine,” Louis brusquely brushes past her, headed to the door. He tries to fight the indecision and the guilt with unwavering courage.

“I knew it,” mutters his mum under her breath, lighting a cigarette and abandoning herself on the couch, which by now is so used to her weight there’s a mould for her body in the cushions.

He’s tempted, so tempted to argue back, but he knows it wouldn’t solve a thing, so he doesn’t stop, he grows stiffer and closes the door behind him with a resolute slam.

He does the stairs in quick succession, all seven the floors, gets out of the building and is assaulted by the cold wind, that makes him realise he didn’t even bring his jacket in the rush of getting out.

The fresh air has the power to simmer his anger down, to cool his thoughts, although he still can’t exactly think straight. He surely won’t go back to the flat.

He restlessly walks in the yard, reaching Aleks’ building, and he presses the button next to the label with Aleks’ surname written in a blurred handwriting and covered in duct tape.

“Who’s there?” a gentle and thick serbian accent asks.

“Louis,” he murmurs resignedly, and the door clicks open without further question.

It’s Ana, Aleks’ younger sister to open him the door once he reaches the right floor.

“Louis!” she chirps happily, hugging his legs. She shows unconditional glee at seeing him, and Louis will hold that dear.

“How are you darling?” he greets the little five year old, tugging playfully at her braids.

“I’m good. I draw an elephant today. I missed you lots.”

Louis smiles to himself as he closes the door, taking Ana’s hand which is already stretched out expectantly. She’s only five, but already has a way with words that leaves Louis every time more baffled.

“An elephant? That’s incredible!” he laughs, letting her drag him inside the small kitchen, pervaded with smell from faraway flavours, the table in the middle of the room all set for dinner, the garish chandelier, old and dusty, hanging too low from the ceiling, and Aleks’ mum busy at the stove putting together dinner for her husband and their six children.

“Louis, how are you sweetheart?” she asks as soon as she spots him on the door. She stops stirring the sauce in the pan only to reach for him and give him a one-armed hug. “I’m sorry, this house is always such a mess,” she apologises, when she has no reason to. Louis has always loved a full and lively house, would trade that with his empty one in a second _._

“I’m good, thanks Ivanka. And no worries, really. It actually smells delicious in here,” he says, leaning into the maternal hug a bit more before parting, because he never gets any of this, and it’s nice, for a change, even if it's a pretend maternal hug.

“Can Louis stay for dinner mummy? Can he, please?” asks Ana pointedly, looking at Louis expectantly with her big brown eyes and tightening her grip on Louis’ hand. He smiles at her, crouching down to bop her nose and making her giggle.

“Ana, leave him alone.”

Aleks suddenly shows up in the small kitchen, stands on the doorframe and greets Louis with a nod of his head.

“It’s fine Al,” says Louis, directing a small smile at Ana, whose expression started becoming upset.

“Louis, of course you can stay if you want to,” says Ivanka, and Louis spares her a grateful look.

“Yeah alright, have you finished with him? He’s _my_ friend, not yours. Come with me Louis, I’ll show you my new footie stickers, they’re sick,” says Aleks impatiently.

“Dinner will be ready in a few!” warns them Ivanka, waving a wooden spoon in the air threateningly.

“Okay mum,” Aleks rolls his eyes, disappearing into his room, that he shares with his two older brothers.

“And wash your hands first!” they hear Ivanka yell from the kitchen.

Aleks snorts and carefully takes from a shelf this book where he sticks all the cards, putting it on the carpet. Louis kneels down and listens absent-mindedly to Aleks explaining how he managed to get each sticker.

Only he can’t focus, can’t think of anything but the argument with Rebecca, of what he’s doing, and if that’s even the right thing, if it’s right staying with the family of his friend for a warm meal when his mother is struggling in their flat, in the other building, thinking she has nobody and that Louis doesn’t care enough, just because he thinks he’s better than her, because he’s tired or because she is a lost cause.

Which she probably _is_ , but the fact that his mother is so dissolute and wasted doesn’t make a justification valid enough for him to be just as dissolute.

And it all comes down to this, doesn’t it?

Louis has always thought that he never had humanity, or that if he did, he managed to lose it during the years, with how life made him kinda become of stone, so cold and stoic, when in reality he just doesn’t know how kind and generous his heart really is because no one ever shows him.

“Hey, I’m going home,” he decides, putting the footie book back down with a sigh.

“What? But you said your mother…” tries Aleks, caught by surprise. He has never understood why Louis even tries with his mum, when he’s said he would have dumped her by now if he was in him.

“Rebecca,” corrects Louis pointedly.

“Yeah,” his friend nods, widening his arms as to make a point of Louis’ remark.

“I’m going,” he says again. He fetches his things, the keys and the shoes, and lingers in the kitchen for a moment to say goodbye to Alek’s mother.

“Thanks Ivanka, but I need to go home.”

“Noo, Louis, you promised you were staying!” cries Ana, who’s sitting at the table working intently yet on another drawing, crayons scattered on the tablecloth.

"Maybe another day, Ana."

“Are you sure you want to go Louis?” asks Ivanka, with a glance that tries not to be judging and worried but fails miserably, and Louis doesn’t know why she even tried to conceal the pity when nobody ever bothers.

“Maybe she needs my help,” is all Louis can say, in a whisper, as a lump occupies his throat, and he feels bad for having to make up excuses because he feels guilty for his own mother, as if that was something out of the ordinary.

Ivanka nods understandingly, and Louis is off before she can add anything, getting out of the building as soon as he manages.

He thought the worries would escape with him when he fled his flat, but they never do.

He runs the stairs, a constant in his life, and opens the door, entering the room in a couple of long strides.

But the room is empty and silent, and cold, because of the window carelessly left open, the curtains fluttering with the wind.

He sighs, the only thing he can do, because he doesn’t have the strength to get in the streets and call for her.

He crawls under the sheets of his bed without undressing or turning the lamp on, and he twists so he’s facing the wall.

The door is open and the house is silent, and he waits and he waits for her to come home, until he’s too tired even to wait and he drifts to sleep, uncomfortably and silently crying.


	4. Billy Joel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Louis has a new friend.

_Manchester, 24th of January 1999_

 

Harry is playing on a swing in the small playground just beside the football pitch.

He’s alone this time, not a trace of Liam or Zayn or Ed, the ginger friend, and that is just what Louis was fervently hoping for.

Not because he couldn’t handle them, _obviously_. However, he is not sure they would let him say a word before making him go or calling someone to get rid of him, and he wouldn’t fight, ever, even though he could.

He wouldn’t force them to talk to him, to accept him, to have anything to do with him. He’s wiser than that.

But— _But_. If there’s some hope, a tiny shred of hope in Harry still being well disposed towards him, then he thinks he at least needs to try.

What exactly he wants to try, thing is, he doesn’t know yet.

He hasn’t got a speech planned, he doesn’t really know how to go over this and he is not that sure he will find in Harry the acceptance that made him so bold and confident about coming here in the first place today.

As he tentatively approaches the playground, with a throbbing heart, Louis is aware he should not be there, not after what happened the other day. That undoubtedly he’s not welcome anymore, if he has ever been at all, in that square of sand, in this pristine neighbourhood that every time makes him question his belonging to this town, if then something so different and so parallel to what he’s used to can exist.

Never mind he is here, walking slowly, savouring the soft turf under the sole of his shoes, the dew from the grass blades leaving wet patches on the suede of the battered footwear. Harry doesn’t notice him getting closer and closer, but keeps swinging up, producing a steady screeching noise that regulates and gives a rhythmic cadence to Louis’ pace.

For some strange reason, and that makes Louis think a bit, the boy looks far more in his habitat now, as he swings slowly and lonely in the cold wind, almost melancholically, and the sky is grey and clouded (although it seems like it is starting to part on the horizon), than he did when he was playing footie with his friends.

He doesn’t look sad, is the thing.

From his own experiences, Louis has always been drawn to associate loneliness with misery, and it’s striking how Harry just seems pensive and content in this frame, as he does his thing while he thinks nobody is watching, a gleam of a small smile on his lips.

Each time he has seen him, Harry has given Louis a snapshot of a life opposite to his, the image of a reality people like him by default envy and despise at the same time.

He has never had the time to even consider it, what Harry represents, to think about stuff like that, about division of society and class, not in any detail anyway.

But he knows about his own condition, he truly knows it too well. And then he sees Harry and his friends, and he understands that’s about how you live a steady life. Normal. He figures that there are kids who live so much more airily than he could ever imagine, even when he thought things were quite alright.

Living most of his life in an environment concealed by a veil of pity, kept hidden with care from the heart of the city, as dust swept under the rug, he has never been in strict contact with these people and their daily life. They can easily walk from their nice houses to the area that hosts the stock market and all their offices through roads full of elegant shops and expensive restaurants, without ever seeing the dark misery that lives just around the corner.

And it is true for the other way around, as well.

No one from the periphery has any interest in going to these posh areas, because they wouldn’t have a reason to. At least for somebody like Louis, who has no intention of stationing at the corner of a fancy street waiting to rob some respectable gentleman man of his fat wallet.

That is maybe why Harry elicits a strange curiosity in him, like the things new and unknown, and although full with guilt, his heart rejoices a bit unjustifiedly at his sight.

He’s like a magnet for him, Louis, who now has the same desire to know more, to understand, as he has to go on with a book to discover the evolution of a particular character.

Harry embodies all the things his mates feel anger towards, the people who occupy the wealthy neighbourhoods of town, the kids going to private schools, the personalities who have nice jobs and a peaceful existence and get things right, float through life in a dignified way, without difficulties, as if they were another species that, due to those privileges destiny endowed them with, deserves to be attacked.

And then there’s Harry, who is probably all of these things together but also seems nice and genuine, came up to Louis, hugged him (Louis doesn’t forget hugs easily) and looks at life with eyes so pure it would be impossible to attribute him with anything but the best adjectives.

And even Louis, who is so cold from lack of love and affection, almost ill-humoured with human interactions, warms and maybe melts a bit under those eyes.

It dawns on him how if he’s doing something that it’s so out of character for his persona, to be here right now, seeking forgiveness— if that’s not what he wants, it’s at least for them not to be cross at him— that is because of what he sees in Harry.

There is something about Harry, something Louis doesn’t quite understand, something that sits in the way he looks at him, in the way he addresses him, probably more than anything in the way he has never shown or badly attempted to conceal that indifference, that coldness Louis is so used to get poured on.

The boy tightly grips the chains that hold the seat of the swing as he pushes himself up, a bit clumsily, because if he were sitting properly then his feet wouldn’t reach the ground. He has a pair of earphones on, and the cord disappears inside the pocket of his warm, fleece-lined green coat.

For a split moment, Louis still contemplates whether he should announce his presence or rather turn on his heels and beat a retreat to never show up back again.       

But there’s no point in keeping going over this, is it, not when he’s already done plenty of thinking, for the whole night actually, as he kept twisting under the covers, as he waited with despondency for Rebecca to come back, which she never did.

And with all the things that don’t spin the right way in his life, he wants to try and fix this one at least, because he’s so done feeling oppressed by the guilt from stuff that doesn’t depend on him.

And that’s not the sole reason, he knows, otherwise he would have just shrugged off everything and never come back to this place, forget it all, easy, like it never happened.

Instead he did come back, under the farfetched illusion that Harry’s actions actually meant that for some reason he’s not going to question he actually wanted to make friends with Louis.

He takes some more steps towards the boy, with bated breath. It’s odd and captivating at the same time, how Harry seems to be completely absorbed in the movement of the swing. He’s got his eyes closed now, and he mouths the words of the song he’s listening to without emitting any sound.

Louis comes right behind him and after a moment of uncertainty he gives him a push, slow and tentative so that he doesn’t startle the other boy, pressing his hands flat on his back.

Harry turns slightly around, startled but seemly not scared. His mouth immediately twitches into a small and smug smile that gives Louis a bit more confidence, because it’s not rejection, at least not yet.

Only Harry turns again, and persists into the silence that was never broken, closes his eyes keeping the smile on his lips, sitting more properly and looking content, like someone who knows far more than you do.

A strange atmosphere sits between them, and Louis doesn’t really know what to make of it, or what to do with himself.

He doesn’t stop pushing Harry on the swing, with more purposefulness as he goes, until the rhythm becomes so fast Harry has to clutch the chains tighter, his hair getting ruffled by the wind as he moves his legs at the same pace of the swing to help the elevation.

Louis keeps going for some minutes, completely focused, until he feels Harry slowing down the movements by putting his feet on the ground. At that he he stops and takes some steps back, swallowing loudly. Waiting.

“Your turn,” are the first words Harry tells him when he gets off the swing with an oddly gracious jump. He then points it to Louis, with the same sly smile stitched onto his face.

Louis would usually find such behaviour incredibly annoying.

Instead, _instead_ , he nods and looks at him, nods and complies, taking his place on the seat, a bit dazed, without being able to utter a word.

Because apparently being in Harry’s presence happens like something completely simple and natural, like the sun rising every morning in the sky, and like it doesn’t with anybody else.

Louis becomes able to forget about everything, and there is no embarrassment, no discomfort, no shame, no worries. There is this boy swinging, listening to music, humming, mind travelling, and Louis wants to travel with him, and never come back.

Looking silently at his face, pale, hair, dark but golden, lips, wet and pink, the hands, delicate and clad in what Louis sees are mittens, _his mittens,_ blue _,_ old and worn out, Louis wants to tell him all the things, put it all out, to explain himself, to talk. And it’s a feeling too big, like the one that weighs on your chest and on your heart when you’re swimming in the deep sea and everything is cocooned and hallucinating. But it’s also beautiful, positive, only Louis almost doesn’t catch the sensation, busy as he is feeling this mighty mixture of happiness and unrest only from the fact that Harry didn’t shoo him away.

Harry’s pushes are weak in a lulling way, and Louis has to help with his feet to give the movement some height. The swing doesn’t creak in that sinister way like the ones he is used to, and the sight of the park in front of him is so, so beautiful.

But Louis can’t appreciate it, he gets restless easily, gets uncomfortable with the eerie atmosphere and the silence, and he needs to fill it _now_.

“What are you listening to?” he asks Harry, turning slightly around to make sure the boy is still smiling.

He is, actually, and he stops pushing Louis to round the swing and come in front of him, careful not to get hit by Louis’ legs. Louis makes a study of Harry’s face, and he can tell his every single emotion, that cast influence on his own, too.

Harry puts his hands in his pockets and smiles even bigger as he rocks on the balls of his feet, gearing up to his answer as if it were some big revelation.

“It’s Billy Joel,” he announces smugly, after taking an excruciating long breath.

He then proceeds to give Louis one of the in ears and smile at him now expectantly, in that way as does someone who loves to share. He pulls out of the pocket this old grey walkman that’s making all sorts of garbled motor noises and clutches at it proudly, as he waits for Louis to listen to a bit of the song to give his opinion.

Harry must probably be the only kid in a thousand miles range voluntarily listening to Billy Joel, Louis thinks.

Although it could also very well be that his mum gave him the cassette or something, and for this reason he is stuck listening to this record, because it’s the only one he owns. Not that there is anything wrong with that, or with Billy Joel itself, anyway.

In fact, Louis likes him very much. Maybe he’s not his favourite, but this song, _The Stranger,_ is actually really good.

“This the kind of music you like? Billy Joel?” he asks, careful not to come off as judgemental.

Not like Harry would care about Louis’ judgement, anyway.

Or maybe he would.

Maybe he is actually one who stops talking about certain things if he feels someone doesn’t approve of them or doesn’t care or doesn’t want to listen. And now, Louis doesn’t need that, can’t have him retreat inside a shell like a scared turtle.

Harry maybe doesn’t look it, but he’s shy, and in a different way from Louis, who only tries to protect his world because he has seen it attacked too many times.

He seems like he’s timid but he tries to fight it, because he’s kind, first and foremost, and that’s the first demeanor to drive his every action.

“Yes. Well, not just that, I like a bit of everything. Also The Who,” informs him Harry cautiously. Louis frowns at the strange juxtaposition of artists. “I listen to a lot of music. Ed makes me all the cassettes with the music I like.”

The notes of the song fill one of Louis’ ears. He nods, and Harry is now closer, hands back in his pockets as he smiles blissfully at him during the guitar solo almost as if he had personally composed the song.

“It’s really great. The cassette player, I mean. That you can listen to music whenever you want.”

Louis has always wanted one. For once, cassettes are less expensive than vinyls, although he really does like his vinyls. It all just comes from the fascination of walking with music in your ears, he thinks. Anyway, it has been the object of Louis’ desires for a while, and obviously Harry has to have it, because it looks like these kids need to have all the good and best things that are in the world. But Harry seems to understand the importance of that little machinery, that weird contraption that Louis can’t believe someone thought about it and then actually made it real, so he will forgive Harry, will be happy for him that he has his favourite songs always with him for when he needs it the most, because according to Louis that’s what everyone should be able to have, especially if you don’t have many other things.

“Yeah, it was actually my mum’s, but she passed it on to me with a couple of her cassettes.” Harry tilts his head slightly, and his smile tilts with it, becoming a bit gloomier.

So Louis was right. He should be a fortune-teller. Or something. Like the ones that show up when the funfair comes to Manchester and that brag on these loud and colourful handmade signboards about how they can predict your future for just five quids.

The boy fumbles with the music player, changing the song after looking at it with an endeared glint in his eyes.“I really like it, you know. I guess it makes me feel less lonely when my family or Zayn and Liam are not around,” he reveals.

Louis hums in understanding and studies the sudden change in Harry’s face. He’s playing fidgety with the cord of the earphones, schooling his expression into an aspiring forced smile, that for such effort looks even more like the grimace it was trying to oust.

Louis takes for himself a couple of moments more to study Harry again, because it seems like every time he does it there is something new to discover, a new particular to learn about this boy. His lineaments this time tell a different story from his seemingly perpetual lightness, happiness towards life.

Tell that maybe there are some dark clouds, too and after all, taunting his clear blue skies.

It fills Louis with a mixture of stupor and relief, and also unjustified worry. He wants to understand the creases around his mouth, the sudden and almost imperceptible frown, but maybe before crowning himself as worthy of being Harry’s confidante he should apologise, show him that he can be good, that he’s not insensitive.

That he’s here after all, _see_ , and there is a reason for that.

“Are you ok Harry?” he asks abruptly before he can think of something better, and he figures it’s a good point where to start, that’s the most important thing, he thinks, as he tries to ignore the pang of guilt in his guts.

He lifts his eyes to the sky to avoid Harry’s, and he finds it now painted in unusual shades of pastel pink, like almond flowers, and blues from the sea.

“Harry?” wonders the boy teasingly, taking off the earphone to focus all his attention on Louis and leaving the slow music background of Louis’ perception alone. “You even know my name. I thought you didn’t know me!” he reproaches, and Louis is flabbergasted at his boldness.

He flushes, mortified and ashamed, pink as the halo around the setting sun, but glances back at Harry to accept his reproach. He obligates himself to look straight in the green of his eyes, but it doesn’t mean he’s not completely dejected, these few stinging words enough to turn him off like a candlelight with no oxygen.

He supposes it’s well deserved.

He slumps in his shoulder and swallows past a lump of pride, surprised, because it’s easier than he thought, and he realises then that he truly wants to fix this.

“I’m— so sorry Harry. About that. Really,” he closes his eyes for a second more than it takes to blink, torturing his lower lip between his fingers.

Harry arches his eyebrows, still silent. Since Louis has never received one sincere apology, he doesn’t know how fleeting the word sorry is considered to be. “I was such a coward. But tell me you’re actually fine,” he wants to make sure, but his lips tremble a bit around the words, and Harry must notice, because his expression turns softer, more condescending.

“I am. I’m quite ok,” he says, eyes squinting, and for the first time he looks taken aback, almost as if he wasn’t expecting Louis to want to go over it. He then takes off the earbud also from Louis’ ear, making the conversation suddenly more serious and so important.

This _is_ important. Louis needs this so bad.

“What about you Louis?”

He’s not mocking, is the first thing that Louis establishes. His voice sounds like a crack of whip around Louis’ name, and the question feels very much the same. His eyes are searching, worrying, he doesn’t seem he’s doing it because it’s good manners to ask back. He looks interested, (concerned?) and Louis doesn’t even know why it still surprises him when everything he’s seen about Harry so far can be described under a light of pure and genuine care.

He ponders on the question as if it were harder than it really is, and he knows he doesn’t really want to answer. Harry knows nothing about him, and this is not the moment to unleash the mess that is Louis’ life on this unaware boy. Because as much as Harry is very friendly, he’s still Harry the stranger posh boy, and they’re not friends, and he can’t do this.

He would maybe like to do this, _maybe_ , because God only knows how much he needs to seek comfort in someone, but he’s not foolish enough to let himself caress the thought.

Is he ok?

It’s been too long since he’s asked so himself, to find an answer to the question. Is he ok on which basis?

He’s healthy, for what a young boy can be. Tired, sometimes, but ok. The panic attacks are under control, he hasn’t had one in ages, and the asthma is getting better. Anxiety is there sometimes, but it’s ok. The job goes fine. He could do with some more money, but that is ok too.

According to the entries of this list, he is ok. But it’s all perspective, isn’t it? Because surely he is not ok at all, and that is why he doesn’t like to find an alternative answer.

“Where are your friends?” he asks, after diverting his stare that was locked to Harry’s and glancing around in search of a diversive. He unabashedly ignores the question, not wanting to lie to Harry and so give him one more reason to be wary of him.

“Liam and Zayn?” Louis nods, glad Harry accepted his reluctance in talking about himself without pushing. “They’ve gone swimming.”

“And you didn’t go with them?”

“I don’t really like swimming, it’s pretty boring. Their mums say that it’s good for the back and stuff.”

Louis can see that. He imagines their parents as these concerned figures, who only want the best for their sons, who buy them new stationery at the beginning of school, who go to parents’ meetings, who send them to do sports in the hope to see them become little champions, olympics, maybe, who sign them up to music schools to see them play arenas, dads who go with them to watch football at the stadiums, mums who kiss them before they leave for school and who help them baking cookies.

“And what about your mum?” he tries to shrug off the thought that he’s being nosy, that as he doesn’t want to be asked about his life he has no right to pry into Harry’s one.

“I told her I didn’t like it and she told me it was fine if I didn’t want to go,” he shrugs with simplicity, bringing his hands behind his back.

“Your mum must be cool,” ascertains Louis, preventing a grimace that wouldn’t have explanation in Harry’s eyes from taking control of his mouth.

“She really is, she’s amazing,” Harry smiles fondly, and Louis understands he must have a special relationship with his mum, and tries his best not to be jealous. “Is yours cool too?” Harry asks at that point, taking Louis aback.

Harry’s question is legit, it probably came naturally, but Louis can’t shake off the feeling that Harry seems to see through all that façade, the clay mask that Louis always thinks he’s so good at putting on.

“She—“

He ponders frantically on the answer to give, on the umpteenth lie to construct, he tries to recall all the information he has given Harry about himself, so that he can give a response that makes sense.

And then he thinks of how much effort this requires and _no_. He already decided he doesn’t want to lie to Harry anymore.

“I don’t want to talk about her.”

“She’s not a good mum?” asks Harry quizzically, straightforwardly, putting on a vexed expression.

_Not at all._

But it’s the one answer Louis hasn’t got the resilience to let out.

He feels bad for refusing to share, to explain, but he came here to apologise and feel better about something, not to let the hurt from the rest of his life surface and punch him with no mercy. He’d quite like to keep the two things separate, what he has at home and this, Harry, if Harry is actually going to become a _thing_.

“I don’t really want to talk about her.”

He hears perfectly how, despite his attempt at naturalness, his answer has still a ring of sadness to it, that Harry obviously catches and that makes him run for a hug.

Louis is floored even if he shouldn’t be, as he accepts Harry in his arms and their bodies collide into each other. He should be used by now to how small and emphatic Harry can be, after seeing so many glimpses of his nature in his every gesture.

He sighs into the hug, enjoying the warmth, the touch, Harry’s nice smell that he didn’t forget from their previous embrace.

“That’s ok,” mumbles the boy in Louis’ neck, caressing his back a few times before they part. “What do you want to talk about then? What do you like besides Blur?”

Louis looks at him, surprised he remembers, when he has always thought he was insignificant, easy to forget because he likes to stick under the radar if he can, so that nobody asks, so that nobody has to think about him.

He exposed himself a bit with Harry, though, something he doesn’t do often, coy as he is, and maybe Harry remembers everything one says because it makes them feel important, or maybe he doesn’t have many people to remember stuff about— he’s alone right now after all— or maybe it’s both things combined.

Maybe he just picks his people carefully.

“You don’t have many friends, do you,” Louis blurts out, following his thoughts and swerving Harry’s question once again. And it’s like he wants to find something in common with Harry, to demonstrate to himself that even when you seem to have everything you can still be upset.

Harry does look quite upset indeed, and Louis wants to slap himself because he likes to put a smile on Harry’s face, not to make it disappear.

“You really don’t want to answer my questions, do you,” says Harry sulking.

“It’s not that— ” Louis fumbles for excuses that are not there, feeling at a loss of words once again.

“My classmates don’t like me much,” Harry cuts him off sadly but firmly.

Louis frowns, taking in Harry’s lovely figure, his clumsy stance, rosy cheeks. His sweet voice still echoes in his ears and he doesn’t understand how anybody could not like him.

“I don’t believe that for a second,” he objects, gesturing at Harry as if that was enough to explain his point. Never been one of loquacious manners, Louis.

“We do get along, but I also like to stay to myself. I like my books and my music and my games, I want to talk about things sometimes they maybe don’t understand or don’t know anything about and they aren’t patient enough, you know? Sometimes I don’t want to join their games because I don’t like them or I prefer to read during recession or just think, and so they don’t always include me anymore. Maybe they think I’m a bit weird. I think they can feel that I’m a bit distant, or too shy. I don’t really want to be included you know, it makes me a bit anxious to stay with people if I don’t feel comfortable. But mum says that you always have to be nice to everyone, and I think that, too, but she says you also don’t have to hang out with people you don’t want to hang out with. And I have Zayn and Liam and Ed anyway, they’re always nice to me and they like to listen and to play with me, and they are always, always gentle, so I don’t care much.”

Harry talks, and his soft features become suddenly more animated, pointed, and his eyes flash as blood goes to his ears.

Louis understands that he must have hurt Harry when he denied he knew him, almost as if he meant to put space between them, to forsake and desert him, to take distances because he finds him strange.That he must have hurt him a few minutes ago, when he didn’t want to answer to his questions, when he acted all detached and cold, even though he didn’t mean it, even though he would like to share and be comforted, only doesn’t want to dump the weight of his burden on such an innocent kid.

It must have been such an effort for Harry to come up to him, to start conversation just because he saw him playing on his own and felt like he should talk to him.

Louis would like to reassure, to say that he doesn’t have to feel that way with him, that he understands, and he feels almost happy that there are so many similarities between the two of them, that not because Harry is who he is he’s different and far away.

But he’s not good at talking feelings, that is the problem. So he does the next best thing.

“Books. I like books. Like, literature. And football,” he mutters, and he thinks he owes it to Harry, and this can be easy, between the two of them. “I really like football.”

He has always wanted to talk about the things he likes anyway, only the kids he knows would mock him, would demean his passions, and the adults would get bored.

Harry wouldn’t.

“Me too,” smiles the boy softly, unaware of the emotional conflict taking place in Louis. “Well, I like _watching football._ I would really like to be good but I am really not. But I already told you that,” he giggles openly, unabashedly, mood already restored to mirth.

This must be it, then, how you get to gradually know somebody, to share tiny bits of you until they can compose the whole puzzle. This is new, Louis thinks, feeling warm inside.

This must be it, how you make friends.

It takes Louis a couple of moments to understand what’s the urge pressing on his stomach at Harry’s words, the urge to _act_ on these words, to play together, to teach Harry some moves, to have fun with the thing that they both like, the passion they share, to make Harry happy and perhaps even less frustrated with his football inadequacy.

“Did you bring the ball?” he asks Harry, already imagining a scenario in which they run happily behind the ball while the weight of his worries falls off his shoulders.

“No,”

Oh.

“Oh.”

Maybe not, then. But maybe another time? He’s about to ask him so, but Harry speaks first.

“Are you going to leave now that you know that I don’t have the ball?” he says teasingly, eyes glinting in mischief without actually managing to hold meanness.

That surely has to be a superpower. Like, it _has_ to be. Super Harry the Nice. It suits him.

His words go in like an attacking thrust of an able fencer, and Louis can’t find in them the pettiness to blame him. It’s a simple question, Harry’s one, but it unveils how the boy still doesn’t trust him, and that hurts a bit.

“Harry I…I don’t mean it like that. I was thinking maybe we could kick around and I could teach you some moves— but I came here to apologise. I came here for you, not for the football,” he says sheepishly, feeling hopeless, opening his heart a bit and for the first time in ages.

Harry lifts his head up in listening, fluttering his eyelashes. “Did you now?”

“Yes. I didn’t mean to cause that mess, I know I shouldn’t have brought them here.”

“Your friends were very rude.”

He means to tell him that they’re not his friends, that he’s acquainted with them, if that, that he doesn’t have friends anyway. That it’s hard to excuse them when that’s not being purposefully rude, when that’s just how they are.

“They…” he doesn’t know what to tell him, how to explain it fully to Harry. “They’re not like you.”

“And you? Are you like me?”

Louis sighs, dread settling in his stomach.

“No.”

Harry frowns, pouting. “Well, you’re not like them either.”

It’s not a question, or a thought. It escapes Harry’s lips like a fact, and Louis would most ardently like for it to be the truth, to believe in that. Because when he can’t condone _them_ , he despises them, and he would like for himself not to be somebody to despise.

In regards to some things he can’t do anything, to the prejudice, the pity, the mistrust, but with his behaviour he tries to prove it all wrong, to fight, to do the right when he can tell it from the wrong.

He sighs again, closing his eyes for a brief moment before speaking, deciding to ignore Harry’s remark and going straight to the point.

“I don’t want to put you in danger Harry. I should have probably thought better about it, it was very stupid of me, to think it could work. I really am sorry, it looks like every time I’m around something bad happens.” Louis puts words together, but inside he is helpless, defenceless.

“You’re still here though,” retorts Harry, crossing his arms on his chest and slowly tapping one foot to the ground.

It hurts, and it stings, and it almost wells Louis’ eyes with ridiculous tears.

“Yeah I— I’m so sorry. I’ll go. I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry, you know. I’m not bad, but I can see how it is hard to believe.”

Again, with the demand of pity, with the useless excuses.

“It’s not hard.” Harry frowns fiercely. “It’s not hard at all. You’re not a bad person Louis.”

Louis snorts, huffs out a breath. “You don’t even know me.”

“I know a bit, and from that I can tell. And I can read it in your eyes.”

Louis shuts his eyelids in reflex, as to take back from Harry whatever thing it is that he has seen, because maybe with the nice ones he has caught on the sorrowful ones, too, and hasn’t given him the permission to do that.

“I’ll go,” Louis says again, albeit weakly and without moving one step.

“But I don’t want you gone!”

Louis can only describe the whine Harry makes as a screech, accompanied by a stomping foot. He flashes him a surprised look and the boy’s eyes widen.

“Sorry,”

He can see regret and awkwardness in Harry’s eyes, and Louis wonders if his mum has ever lectured him about not playing the spoilt little vain kid after throwing a fit like this.

He’s so lovely, though, and as his cheeks turn pink Louis’ heart swells with something akin to endearment.

Harry seems to make a resolution within himself and takes Louis’ hand, holding tight, the texture of his mittens reminding Louis of this little connection they have. He’s not ever going to ask them back, and Harry doesn’t seem he’s going to mention about returning them, almost as if he, too, needed a little reminder of the boy who played with a cobble and gave him a George Best footie card.

“You don’t need to apologise,” Louis tells him, trying hard to shrug off the thought that somebody seems to want him.

“Well, neither did you. For that one thing at least. You can’t control how other people act.”

Louis churns at what Billy and the other boys did to them, wants to go back and make them stop, speak out, give back the ball to Ed and console Harry.

“But I can intervene. They were right bullies,” objects Louis helplessly.

“Yeah, they were. And you were not. I was just mad you pretended not to know me,” admits Harry. “Not mad, actually. Sad, maybe?” he looks focused on trying to give a name to his feelings, the little pouting lip protruding even more.

“I’m sorry,” repeats Louis like a mantra, almost as if he keeps saying it it will fix something. “I don’t really belong here,” almost as if he keeps reminding Harry he will tell him to just go already.

“But I want you here.”

He doesn’t. He doesn’t, of course, because he’s Harry.

“Harry, you don’t understand,” tells him Louis weakly and exasperatedly, tugging at his hand with non-existent strength to make him drop the hold.

“Well, then explain it to me,” Harry only grips tighter.

“You shouldn’t mingle with boys like me. We only bring trouble. I’m not— I’m poor. I don’t live in a nice house like you do. I don’t have the life that you have, or the friends that you have.”

His stomach growls with the need to be sick at the words he puts out.

“But...I don’t care Louis, I just like you. I’ve never seen trouble in you. I want to hang out with you. You don’t?” he sounds offended, his voice worked up like he’s fighting a choke, although for Louis it’s quite hard to believe.

“I—” he does, is the thing. So very much. “I like you too Harry.”

“Then I don’t see a problem.”

He tugs at Louis’ hand with more effort and makes him stumble forward, resigned. Then he stills him, by taking a hold of his other hand.

Louis sighs, looking seriously at Harry’s eyes. They’re bright in challenge and in confusion, and Louis needs to put something else in there, something nice. He feels like it’s his duty, because Harry’s eyes have so much more potential, and he can’t keep turning them off.

“Will you stay away from them, though? From those guys?”

“Will you still come here if I do?”

He must be the most stubborn person Louis’ ever encountered, included himself, and that’s the only reason he caves.

“Yeah, okay.”

Harry frees his hands to wrap his gangly arms around Louis, once again, and with his lined coat, scarf, and all this warm ensemble that he makes, he feels to Louis like a ball of fluff, a stuffed pup.

“Harry, seriously. Look at me. Promise me. They—“ he doesn’t want to scare him, is the thing. He feels the need to protect him, like Harry is this small boy, too naïve for this world, when he probably knows so much more than Louis. He looks innocent and delicate though, and his happiness towards things, his reluctance to see bad in what surrounds him warm Louis’ heart, but worry him, too.

It’s something he doesn’t do, worry about people. He worries about Rebecca, and Julie, surely. But it feels like a different kind of worry, and for a heart unpolished and coarse like Louis’ it’s hard to label it as affection.

“I got it, Louis. I will, don’t worry,” he lets go a bit, much to Louis’ displeasure. “Thank you for coming and apologising. Will you still teach me football when you come here again?”

“You’re strange,” Louis looks down at him disbelievingly, voice kindling with laughter.

But Harry looks hurt, stiffening abruptly and reminding Louis of the conversation about his schoolmates and how once again he’s saying all the wrong things.

“No!” he hurries, “not like that, I—I like you Harry! I am probably strange too, you know, probably everyone is strange, you’re a nice strange, actually not that stran—“

Harry laughs, his pout melting into a smile, and he was likely just feigning outrage.

“I like you too. I was only messing with you.”

He hides his laugh in Louis’ chest, just staying there for some moments. It’s nice, but Louis’ not used to this, and when the hug lasts a few seconds more than he can take to not feel his cheeks flush, he lifts a bit from where he buried his face in Harry’s shoulder and loses his stare on the bench, where Harry’s stuff is scattered.

“Is that _The Silver Skates_?” he questions hesitant at the sight of a familiar book cover among the other things, and he soon regrets asking, flushing as a natural reflex, not for the hug but for all the times he’s been caught knowing about books and authors and school stuff only to be met with a mocking glare by his friends, who friends are really not.

Save for Aleks. He’s good, that boy, and he doesn’t tease him, he doesn’t mind. But he also doesn’t really understand him.

“Yeah, it’s really good. If you want I can lend it to you once I’m done.”

“I already read it,” he says before gaping a bit at himself and finally shutting his mouth.

Harry squeaks delighted at that, detaching from Louis to take the book in his hands and leafing through the pages, stopping sometimes to brush over one line of words underlined with a pencil.

“I think it’s really great, better than Oliver Twist that we’re reading for school. Did you read that one, too?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you read nicer books in school when you grow up?”

Once again Harry’s question is out of curiosity, and he is unaware of the hurt and the lump that it puts in Louis’ stomach.

“I don’t go to school anymore.”

“Oh.”

He can feel the surprise, then the blankness, then the chagrin in Harry’s voice and in his face, and Louis is ready to receive judgement.

“It’s because you’re so clever?” says Harry abruptly, locking eyes with Louis, piercing.

“Harry…”

“I think it’s because of that,” he settles, and he sounds so resolute he’s not going to accept objections. Louis feels a flush climb the back of his neck and doesn’t really have the fortitude to explain, because explaining would bring other unwanted questions and after that it’s all a vicious circle he doesn’t want to be a part of.

“Why did it look like you were ashamed of reading, though?” continues Harry unperturbed. “You don’t need to hold back. Even the other day, when you were talking about music, it was almost like you tried to restrain yourself. It’s not nice.”

Louis is not ever going to not be surprised about how studying and attentive and acute this boy can be.

“It’s ‘cause they tease me because I read and I like the music and stuff,” reveals Louis in between gritted teeth.

“But why?”

Louis goes to answer but he realises he doesn’t know. There’s no reasonable explanation, in the same way there is no reasonable explanation to half the stuff they do. Maybe they find it funny, and they manage at the same time to make Louis feel like a stupid for not thinking like them.

“You’ve seen how they are. They think it’s a waste of time, that it’s pretentious. Well, maybe they don’t say the word pretentious, but that’s what they mean. They— with their behaviour, they want to show one-upmanship, you know. Wackiness. They would make fun of me so bad. They already do.”

“You don’t have to be embarrassed of the things you like, though. You should wear them as armour! I like when people speak with passion in their eyes. They look prettier you know?”

Louis shrugs, and for a moment silence replaces their voices, and it’s not awkward nor heavy.

There is the wind, though, blowing pitiless and harsh, making leaves rustle, and there are cars passing by, hurrying through the road on the other side of the pitch.

“I’ll let you in on a secret” Harry smirks casually, conspiratorially, and Louis looks at him expectantly. “Your eyes are a very nice blue, but when you speak about the stuff you like they turn blue like the deepest sea.”

He says it with the normality of someone stating that the sun is shining, but that doesn’t mean Louis doesn’t feel his face reddening, and he has to lower his stare, just for a moment, just so he doesn’t let his vulnerability show more than he already has.

“I should really go now. Not because I don’t want to stay here,” he hurries to reassure, “but I have to go— I have stuff to do.”

Harry frowns. “Are you coming back?”

“Yeah,” he answer with something that’s for him this time, and not just because he thinks that’s what Harry wants to hear. “I am.”

“When can we meet again then?” he looks so, so hopeful.

Louis hums, thinking about Rebecca and where she could be, and whether he will find other calls from Julie once he gets home, and he realises in wonder that for the whole time he was with Harry he didn’t have one thought about all of this, be that one.

“Soon.”

He still doesn’t know if he should, if he deserves this, but he’s always serious when he makes promises, because he knows how much it hurts when you’re on the receiving end of one and then it gets broken.

 

-

 

_Manchester, 27 th of January 1999_

 

He establishes that he probably doesn’t deserve Harry, but he does go back.

Part of him thinks he shouldn’t let himself have this, but the other one thinks it’s all rubbish, that there’s nothing wrong, there is no reason to hold back.

And he _promised._

Rebecca came home in the end. She entered the door answering evasively Louis’ questions without caring about explaining herself, shrugging off his enquiries by telling him in some muttered shifty response that she was at some friends’.

Who these phantom friends are, Louis still wonders.

He then finds her close to the washing machine, clad in an old pajamas, trying to work out how to start the cycle. She didn’t even worry about stuffing the basket completely so they don’t waste water, electricity and soap. She put her clothes in it, added an excessive amount of liquid washer, closed the lid and didn’t think of anything else.

He corners her against the appliance after pressing the correct buttons to start the washing, trying to get some less elusive answers from her, but she closes herself in a pensive silence, and Louis knows he’s not going to obtain anything from her.

He‘s not in the mood to argue, anyway. He got his money from work just yesterday and already spent a good amount of it in bills and some groceries and he’s already worrying whether what is left will last until the end of the month.

So he is not in the mood for this, not at all.

He decides in the spur of the moment to grab hastily one book— some Walt Whitman poetry— from the shelf in the room he has claimed as his and get out, headed motionly for the park, in the hope to meet Harry.

He didn’t even realise, see, but that’s what he wants to do now. Maybe they can finally play a bit, Louis can teach him to shoot penalties, or they can read a bit. Does Harry like poetry? Louis wonders, putting chary step after step and quickening the pace because it’s already the sunset and if he doesn’t hurry up he will never make it there by the day. He said he likes books, yes, but poetry is a whole different matter. And it depends on the poetry, anyway. But it’s ok if he doesn’t, they can also talk about other books. Louis hopes he likes Russian literature, at least. If he doesn’t Louis will tell him everything about it. Everyone should like it, he thinks.

As he walks, he doesn’t feel ill at ease anymore, like he did the first times he went through these streets. He’s starting to know this part of the city, and he now remembers every road, every pavement, the order of the houses built in perfect tidy rows, the charming gardens, the oak trees, the second to last lamppost in the street of Harry’s house that’s blown out.

When he finally arrives at the pitch, he finds it packed. There is a match going on, several parents are chatting amiably along the sidelines, many girls are playing in the playground. He also sees Liam and Zayn, clumsily trying out some roller skates, but Harry is not with them.

He looks around, scanning the playground and the pitch, searching for a curly mop of hair. He knows it’s pretty fruitless, for what Harry told him. Zayn and Liam are his best friends, he would be surprised to see him with someone else if they are around.

As much as Harry is nice and friendly, it looks like he has something stopping him. As if it’s hard to put himself out there, as if sometimes he has these pushes of bravado that make him a bit more extrovert but then he feels so insecure and uneasy because he only feels safe in the company of few people he trusts and likes.

Louis lets himself think he can become one of those.

As he scans the ground, he locks eyes with Zayn for an eternal moment. His heart starts stammering with nerves, he flushes, and decides it’s better to back off.

There is something about Zayn that intimidates him, hard as it is to admit it, so he turns on his heels and starts walking the road back.

“Hey!”

He has made it to the corner with the main street when he hears a rough screech on the asphalt. He turns and sees Zayn right in front of him, still on his roller skates. He slowed down planting the heel of his skate on the asphalt, while Liam is following a bit behind.

Louis sighs, and comes to a halt, mentally preparing himself to what’s to come.

“Hi,” he says pursing his lips, and he feels a bit ridiculous. Awkward.

“Did you come to steal our roller skates, too?”

“Zayn,” warns Liam, who caught up with them albeit a bit panting.

Zayn’s tone is poisonous, not scared, and he purses his lips challengingly. Louis closes his eyes and sighs, throws one hand in his ruffled hair and then slides it on his face, gaining seconds to think.

He feels guilty, never has really stopped, but this is his chance to apologise, to clear this mess and he’s selfishly glad Zayn is doing this, thinks he deserves to feel like that to make it better, if he manages.

“No, I took that on me,” he tells Liam reassuringly, even though he technically didn’t look for a confrontation. “I’m sorry,” he finds himself saying. “I already told Harry but I want to tell you too, I’m proper sorry. It wasn’t my intention, I really didn’t think it through.”

“Oh, really.”

He thoroughly admires Zayn for being so brave, for coming up to him when he was leaving, for wanting to square it up with him, with no fear. He doesn’t know if they will accept his remorse, but he hopes they do, or at least they don't forbid him from seeing Harry.

“Yeah, they’re not evil in the nature, and I’m not trying to justify them, it’s just—“

“You’re trying to justify yourself,” deadpans Zayn with bilious eyes.

“No! No, I— I know I fucked up, there’s no excuse for that.” He bows his head in shame. He knows. It’s hard to explain, to give them excuses without trying to put himself in the same position, asking them to pity him.

Harry told him he’s not like them, but that’s only for his eyes.

The rest, they can’t see through the mud and the ripped clothes, can’t see his struggle to always do the right thing.

“They don’t have an easy life,” he knows he’s talking about himself, too, and he knows Zayn and Liam, being more aware and a bit older can sense that. “It’s not a justification, it’s...how it is. How they’ve been taught. How they’re showed they should act.”

“And there’s nothing that can be done,” finishes Zayn.

Louis knows where he is going with that. Zayn’s nostril are flared and he looks irritated, but he is also talking, still, and that is the tantamount as to giving Louis a chance.

“It was my fault, I can own up to that, but I didn’t think they would act that way. I also didn’t think we could bump into you. I didn’t mean any harm.” He knows he must sound like a broken record, but that’s when he needs to make clear, for them to understand him.

“You know, just because they think they’re scary they don’t have to act like they own the place,” says Liam slowly.

“I don’t condone them. I can’t do much for them, I don’t think they would say sorry. Look, you don’t have to take me on trust and listen to what I have to say, but you deserve truthfulness, at least. And maybe I’m here a bit egoistically, I’m here for me, to apologise for causing that situation and for not intervening. I should have defended you. Not like you’re not capable to do that on your own, I know.”

“Well you didn’t really do anything. But that’s also the problem, _you didn’t really do anything,_ ” says Liam.

“It was very shitty of me. I wanted to, but I didn’t really have the strenght to go against them.”

“Not for some kids you just met,” smirks Zayn pointedly, and although there is something inexplicably relieving about his expression, Louis’ heart sinks all the same.

“It’s not that. I like you, and Harry. I really like Harry. You are good and I should have fought for you for this reason. It’s simple, but I didn’t realise. I just don’t always make the right decisions, and then it’s too late.” He slumps in his shoulders, defeated. “I’m not asking you to forgive me like Harry did. You can take my apology and not do anything with it.”

Zayn exchanges a quick look with Liam, and then they stay silent, studying him with scanning eyes. By the time one of them speaks, Louis' stomach turns into a giant lump, pressed with nausea.

“Don’t be the enemy of yourself,” tells him Zayn, eyes skimming Louis’ figure, and there’s an undercurrent of frustration in his voice.

Louis looks away. He doesn’t want to hold that look, he doesn’t feel good about Zayn’s words, about his perplexity as he scans Louis’ struggle, puzzling his brain out on what it could mean.

“It’s hard for me not to be.”

He sounds honest, but powerless, and he knows it's all out there. He could do with ending it here, there’s nothing much he can do anyway. What he doesn’t expect though, is Zayn getting close, giving him a pat on the back, nodding at him, offering up a half smile.

“Harry is ill.”

His words sound accommodating, his face looks expecting and nonchalant. But in reality, Louis knows that sharing this piece of information means all the things. “I know you were wondering,” he tells him.

Louis frowns, feeling his throat tighten. He’s suddenly worrying.

What does Harry _have_.

Is it bad.

But surely they wouldn’t be strolling on roller skates if it was something really bad, would they?

“What does he have?”

Zayn’s face relaxes, like he got confirmation on something, and puts on a smirk Louis doesn’t understand, letting Liam answer.

“Just a bit of flu. He got sick in class yesterday and Laure wouldn’t let us go see him only so we wouldn’t catch that as well, don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried,” he mutters hastily under his breath, throat embarrassingly dry.

“You were. And that’s alright,” says Zayn matter-of-factly, and Louis’ clueless to his smugness, but will accept that he’s able to see through him so easily if this is the turn this situation is going to take.

“We’re going to visit after tea, do you want to come with us?” offers Liam gently.

“We bought a box of jaffa cakes to give him, we can say it’s from the three of us.”

It’s Zayn the one to talk this time, and it feels to Louis like a palm branch, the nicest and most forgiving peace offer. It feels like acceptance enough, and Louis’ heart flutters with relief, and the air around them is still cold as shit, but miraculously lighter, and Louis’ not even religious so he should probably stop thinking in christian metaphors.

“No. But will you tell him I said hi? That I hope he gets better soon. I—I promised him I would come hang out, but then some stuff came up.”

“Will do,” says Zayn, at the same time as Liam smiles a “No problem.”

Louis offers them a sincere smile that turns him sheepish.

"I think I better go now,” he says then, burying his hands in the pockets of his jacket, lifting himself up on his tiptoes once, making an involuntary popping sound with his lips.

Silence.

“Bye then,” says Louis tentatively, starting to walk, feeling Liam and Zayn’s stare on his neck, feeling under scrutiny.

There’s silence again, until it’s broken.

“Hey, did you want to kick around for a bit until we have to go?” asks Liam warmly and unexpectedly. He turns, in time to see Zayn nodding encouragingly.

Louis looks at them, then pensively at the old watch on his wrist. Technically, he doesn't have much to do.

“Uh, yeah. Why not.”

Zayn sends Liam to fetch his football from his house, giving him his skates.

“My mum would be so cross with me if she saw me coming back to leave the skates after just half an hour. She would scold me for making her buy me a new toy only to get tired of it immediately.” Zayn snorts and Louis does too, but it’s not in scorn.

Liam is incredibly quick, and soon back with the ball. They make it back to the pitch, taking a spot for themselves amid the chaos of kids. Liam throws Louis the ball, and Louis puts it on the ground, taking it on his left foot and juggling it twice before kicking it to Zayn, without letting it touch the ground.

“Kick-up passes, is that ok?” he asks them, huffing a laugh at Zayn’s attempt to stop the ball with his knee. Maybe not, then.

“Ugh, sure, because we will manage more than three passes,” Liam says, unimpressed, crossing his arms on his chest and waiting for Zayn to get it together and pass him the ball.

“Sorry about that,” sighs Zayn, giving up on his knee and taking the football in his hands before kicking it to Liam. “We’re not very good.”

“Don’t worry, you should see the guys from the neighbourhood where I live,” lets slip Louis.

“Where do you live?”

Liam is better than Zayn and manages to arch the ball towards Louis without any problem.

“Eh…” says Louis evasively, focused on the ball. “Far from here.”

He can feel Zayn study him intently as he goes on with the keepie-uppies.

“You mustn’t really have many parks if you come all the way here then,” he speaks casually, and Louis feels heat flushing his body, and why can’t he control his reactions as he can control the ball?

“It’s really not as nice as here,” he explains vaguely, and he hopes it’s enough.

“Then you should come more often.”

Zayn is smiling when Louis lifts his head up in surprise. He throws the ball behind himself, catching it by bending backwards one leg and then passing it to Zayn in gratitude.

Liam whistles slowly, clapping twice with an impressed twitch to his lips. “You really are pretty good you know? Like Harry says.”

Louis’ heart flutters for a moment, like a bee trapped under a glass.

“He does?”

“He always does. Never shuts up about you,” smiles Liam softly.

It’s enough to make Louis happy for the rest of the day.

 

-

 

_Manchester, 29 th of January 1999_

 

He gets out of the building and his friends are gathered around the yard, smoking what smells consistently of weed. There’s only four of them, Riley, Logan, Mark and finally Billy, who stares at him for one second before taking a drag of the joint.

They have a football hanging around, probably the one they stole to the Didsbury boys, that lays in between Riley’s feet like a prestigious prisoner. Louis has to acknowledge them with a nod as he makes the stairs that lead to the yard, but prays they don’t ask him to join them. He would have to say no, and the relationship between them is already enough strained as it is. Football was everything to Louis, and he never missed a chance to play, but now he thinks nicely of it only if it’s associated to the park. More than the park itself, it’s all about his new friends. He’s careful with that word, Louis, but he can tell the relationship he has with Harry Liam and Zayn, the interactions, the words exchanged are different from what he has with these kids. There’s just more behind, a more he can’t explain yet, but that surely feels like something.

Riley and Mark lift one hand in greeting, gesturing him to join them.

“Hey Louis, we were thinking about going to that park, you joining?” asks Logan, almost as if he had been reading his mind. Louis cringes internally and can’t help putting on a pained expression. Billy is still silent and doesn’t even look at him.

He can’t have a remake of the scenes from the other time, is the thing. He looks at them, smoking a fag, and he knows he needs to prevent whatever it is that they want to happen.

“What?” he asks dumbly.

“Yeah something against it?” Billy is the one to finally speak. Louis furrows his brow at the bluntness, something cold whipping through him at Billy’s remark.

That’s where old Louis would back off, probably. And that’s also where right now Louis has to make himself heard.

“Me? Absolutely not. But I heard there’s the police patrolling, you know. It’s a pretty supervised area because it’s such a rich suburb. I just wouldn’t risk it.”

They stay silent at that. It’s playing dirty, but it’s also playing their game. Louis knows they’ve got their fair share of bad criminal records from all the small crimes they committed through the past years.            

“He’s right,” grimaces Riley in pain, snatching the joint from Mark.

“It’s not like they can do anything,” Billy says, but it’s so weak and uncertain that Louis can already sing in victory. “It’s a fucking public park!”

“What the hell are you saying? You know they would stop you in a heartbeat, have you seen how you look?” says Logan, claiming the joint in turn after allowing Riley only one drag and gesturing at Billy’s scarred face and deformed clothes. “What if they blabbed about the ball to the police and they’re looking for us?”

“Fuck the police, what, are you all scared?” takes the mickey Billy, frowning at them.

“No!” they say hurriedly, and then silence falls upon them while Louis watches the scene unfold without intruding.

They feign boldness, but he can see they’ve decided against going to the park. Even Billy realises it’s foolish, he wouldn’t be so stupid to risk.

Louis decides it’s time to go, grips at the book in his hands— _Pride and Prejudice_ , a classic— until his knuckles become white, and clears his throat.

“I’m gonna go then,” he announces.

The four boys look at him, and he makes an aborted gesture with one hand.

“Don’t you want to smoke?”

“No, thanks. I’m fine. I need to go,” he says, flinching and already taking one step back, because as he takes in the frame of this little group of boys, he realises, sad as it is, that they represent all the things he wants to stay away from.

Not their status, their culture, their family situation. He’s talking about the way they act, the way they see the world, the meanness irremediably rooted in their heart, albeit maybe unconsciously.

“What, are you going back to one of your books?” taunts Billy insolently, and he hasn’t got the right, it’s not fair, but he has never really cared about what is fair after all.

It’s not right, because it makes Louis feel ashamed when he wouldn’t want to, makes him almost fumble for excuses as he grips tighter at his book, until Harry’s words play in his head and he ends up staring blankly at Billy, unimpressed.

“Yeah,” he says, and he feels so proud of himself. “It’s Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen, you know.”

He feels bold, smug, and realises that reading is becoming for him an act of opposition to every bad contingency he faces. As he speaks, caressing the characters of the book with the thought, he can’t wait to go back to reading it for the upteenth time, to see Elizabeth run with an imaginary light in her eyes to her Darcy, a light more beautiful because Louis can give it the brightness he prefers. And years later, reading the book again after it’s been laying on the shelf untouched for some time, he will realise how it’s the same light he has when he spots Harry as he walks to Didsbury Park, the light of someone at his happiest, of someone who sees the best thing in their life. For now, though, he will settle on Elizabeth and Darcy’s glistening eyes, as they love each other against their families and the social constructs, and in all of this he can’t wait to discuss it with Harry.

It’s all he can think about as he saunters happily, almost jumping in the streets, reaching the park so quickly and running to Harry Liam and Zayn playing football badly on one side of the pitch.

Harry hasn’t even spotted him but he’s already running for a hug, and when their bodies meet Louis’ can’t hold a giggle down.

“Are you feeling better?” he asks, studying Harry’s flushed cheeks.

“So much better! Thank you for the biscuits, they were delicious!”

Louis lifts his eyes from Harry’s curls to glance questioningly at Zayn, who quirks an eyebrow and shrugs, directing a radiant smug smile at him.

 _Thank you,_ he mouths him and Liam, before Harry takes him by the hand and drags him towards the goal net.

“You promised we would play! Didn’t you, Louis? Tell them you’re going to teach us!”

“I’m really not that good that I can teach you much, but we can do some passes and stuff,” he says, placing carefully his book on the bench beside Liam’s discarded coat.

He likes this. Feeling involved.

They all position themselves as the vertexes of a rhombus and Louis starts to show them the right way to kick the ball when you want it to not gain height, rotating his leg so that the point of touch between it and the round object is just the side of his foot.

He passes to Harry, spurring him to try what he just showed him. Harry carefully places the ball on the ground, then kicks it, trying to emulate Louis’ movement. The ball doesn’t actually leave the ground, only it takes such a crooked trajectory it ends up well far away from Zayn, who was the initial aim of Harry’s pass.

Harry looks at the ball dejected, pursing his lips and bending his head in shame. Liam, prompt as a mother hen, soon reaches him and pats his back. “It was a nice try, Haz.”

“Yeah, you keep improving!” backs up Zayn, throwing Louis a significant glance.

It’s nice to observe their dynamics. Louis feels like he can learn a lot from the way they address each other, from how they treat each other and how they interact. He can take a lot of their personalities, of their character, and he can also understand the right way to make himself fit in this oddly assorted group, where the bonds seem so strong it’s hard to think about altering them.

He doesn’t want to, anyway. He wants to make his own bonds, wants them to accept him for what he has to give. That’s why he gets to Harry, too, and smiles.

“Your technique is pretty good, you just need to focus on where you want the ball to end up,” he tells him. Then he takes his hand, tugging him towards the football and positioning him in front of it. “There. Now kick it again, only this time look forward and think of an imaginary straight line, and give the ball some power,” he instructs.

He releases Harry’s hand and waits until the boy stretches his leg and kicks the ball towards Liam. The kick is not perfect, but noticeably better than the previous one, making Liam only move a bit to stop the ball. Both Zayn and Liam clap enthusiastically, making Louis’ mouth break out in a smile.

“I did it!” giggles happily Harry, stretching out the palm of his hand to high five Louis.

“You did it!” he laughs, and it gains one grateful pat on the back from Liam. 

“You are the best teacher, you know that? Even better than Bianca when she teaches me algebra!”

“Oh yeah, sisters can be annoying.” Louis purses his lips, expression darkening all together.

“You have a sister? How old is she? Does she teach you algebra too?” asks Harry wonderingly.

Louis cringes, forcing a smile. “Uh, no she—err, she’s in Berlin. She’s eighteen.”

“And did your mum let her leave?” asks Zayn, joining the conversation.

Did she? Sometimes Louis is not even sure Rebecca remembers she has a daughter. And the times she does, she is only able to insult her and curse her and whatnot. She surely has never thought about reaching out for her, or track her down to find out where she was. In the months they didn’t hear from her Louis’ pretty sure her name didn’t leave his mother’s lips once.

He’s about to deflect the conversation with an excuse when Harry speaks.

“Louis doesn’t like to talk about his mum,” he says, looking pointedly at Zayn and Liam with an air of reprimand. The two boys look dazedly from Louis, to Harry, to Louis again, face puzzled in confusion.

“Err, it’s true. They’re a bit unconventional, my sister, my mum. I don’t even call her mum to be honest,” he reveals.

“She’s not a good mum,” tells them Harry severely, although his voice holds a bit of sadness Louis will keep dear to his heart.

Liam nods understandingly, while Zayn just looks at him, and Louis’ has given up on trying to figure out the emotions behind his looks. It’s enough to know they are not looks of diffidence anymore.

“Then we don’t talk about her,” says Liam, massaging Louis’ shoulder brotherly with his big strong hands.

Zayn puts the ball on the ground and kicks it towards Louis and like that they start playing again and don’t mention Rebecca anymore, and Louis’ can’t thank them enough.

Someday. Maybe someday, he will tell it all.

“Hey Louis, it’s Harry’s birthday on Monday, why don’t you come to the party?” asks Liam at some point, while they’re in the middle of a little scrimmage.

Louis looks up, dumbfounded.

“Oh, yes! Please Louis, will you come?” Harry pleads with imploring eyes, even joining his hands together. “It’s not a big thing, just an afternoon tea at home.”

Yes, Louis sees himself, walking the path that leads to Harry’s house, black jeans, jumper and his only jacket, maybe a hat because it’s really, really cold. Walking through the door, being X-rayed by Harry’s mum, Harry’s dad, his sister, all dressed up to the toe, comparing himself to Harry’s schoolmates and being commiserated, sitting around the table for some posh tea drunk from fine china he will be afraid to hold in case it breaks.

Yeah, no.

“Harry, I would love to, but— I didn’t know it was your birthday. I can’t come, see, I have stuff to do,” he talks hastily, thinking that the illusion couldn’t last, that he was foolish enough to think he could just blend himself with three Didsbury boys with the shirts buttoned to the neck.

“But friends go to friend’s birthdays! Even some of my classmates are coming and I love them less than you!”

Louis flushes, and drops his gaze. “I’m sorry Harry, I have some things to do that I can’t cancel.”

It’s all lies, and it feels heavy doing this to Harry, but he can’t help the smile tucked under his voice, despite everything.

“You always do,” pouts Harry. “Are we still friends though?”

“Yes. We are,” he’s quick to respond.

And yes, despite everything, he can say so with almost complete certainty.

 

-

_Manchester, 31 st of January 1999_

So. He doesn’t do this. He’s never done this.

He rocks nervously on the balls of his feet after reaching the counter where they serve coffee and Matilde is polishing with care some wine glasses after they’ve been washed.

He has never asked for some hours off work. On the contrary, he has always tried to cumulate as many as he could, to take every single shift possible, because working helps him not to think, not to commiserate himself. _“Work ennobles the man,”_ Bruno always tells him when he tries to explain his hard working, to play it off as a cure, as a therapy more than anything.

He doesn’t do this, not even when Rebecca needs him, not even then, because he knows in the end it wouldn’t be worth it. It’s always the same story with her and he doesn’t deem her so important to stray from his things just to run and take care of her, or go check where she is, or something like that.

Matilde lifts her glance from the glasses to look at Louis, a questioning air to her look.

“Alright love?”

Louis nods shortly, pursing his lips. He doesn’t do this.

“Would it be a problem if I took a couple of hours off now? It’s not crowded, is it, and I can do the whole night tomorrow?”

Matilde’s eyes become puzzled.

“Again, alright love?”

He still doesn’t do this.

“Yeah, just. I wanted to go and look for a birthday present. For a—a friend,” he can say that, he’s allowed. “Yeah, that,” he says again, shrugging in his shoulders.

He’s flushing. He really doesn’t do this.

Matilde’s mouth curves into a smile that is amused, happy, smug and also surprised, if possible.

“That’s so sweet Lou, you are so lovely! Of course you can!” she singsongs happily. “And of course you don’t need to do more shifts, I’ll pay you these hours anyway, God knows you never ask for anything, love! What are you getting this friend of yours?”

“I don’t know yet, I’m going to look for something in town. I still have no idea, to be honest. It’s so stupid.”

“Not at all, love! Not at all! What does this friend of yours like?”

She sounds so careful, so soft when she says the word friend, as if saying it too loud could break this phantomatic friendship Louis thinks he has. But Harry said so. Louis should stop questioning other people’s feelings, or trying to decide them on their behalf.

“Eh a lot of things. I think. Books. Music. Manchester United.”

“Just like you then.”

“Yes. And no. He’s more—fine. Polished.” _Important_.

“Just go with your heart, I’m sure you’ll find something he appreciates. And if not, it’s the thought that counts, yes?”

Yes, he guesses it is.

It doesn’t prevent him from wandering for two whole hours among the narrowest streets of town, looking for the perfect present for his new acquired friend.

He ends up in all his favourite shops, though, and that’s such a Louis thing to do. But then he thinks that true, the gift is for Harry, but it should also be something that tells that Louis picked it, and they like the same stuff anyway, so he thinks it’s fine.

He settles on two things, and as he wraps them poorly and stores them in the safety of the cabinet, just not to take risks, he only thinks about the face Harry will make tomorrow when he sees them, instead of thinking about his empty wallet.

 

-

 

_Manchester, 1st of February 1999_

 

It’s Harry’s birthday. And it’s snowing.

Louis makes it home from work walking hastily among the streets covered in white, wet from his shoes to half of his calves but still happy, absolutely impatient to fetch Harry’s presents and bring them to him, to wish him a happy birthday.

Only he opens the door, and he is met with the gagging noises only the bathroom is witness of.

He sighs, preparing himself to the sight, etched onto his mind, of Rebecca doubled over the toilet bowl, ready to yell at him. He fills one glass with water and fetches an effervescent tablet from the medicines’ drawer, and for once, maybe the only time, he wishes she wasn’t home, so that he could have just gone to Harry.

Instead he’s here, letting himself be eaten alive by the sense of guilt and by the qualms.

And for real, this time, he thinks he hates her.

 

-

 

_Manchester, 4 th of February 1999_

 

For once Louis sits on the bench when Harry is still not there.

He waits for _long_ , but when time comes where he would have usually left he doesn’t, and he sits back for some more time, then he stands up, and after a jog around the pitch, after walking to the small lake and looking at the ducks and coming back to a still very empty bench, and sitting again, he stands up because he feels a bit restless and nervous and what if Harry doesn’t show up, it’s already ridiculous to give a present so many days after the birthday, never mind about weeks, or what if he shows up and he doesn’t like the things Louis has gotten him, and again, why did he get them in the first place.

What if Harry thinks he wants to buy his friendship.

But then Harry does show up, so at least one problem can be written off Louis’ list of worries. He arrives gingerly walking, a happy smirk puffing out his cheeks and evidencing his cheekbones and his dimples, looking down following the movements of his feet.

“How was your birthday party then?” asks Louis, meeting him halfway to the bench.

Harry looks up, smiling the brightest.

“Lou!”

He hugs him.

“I like when you hug me,” says Louis without restraints.

“I will hug you always then. But first, I have something for you,” Harry tells him.

“But it’s your birthday, not mine, silly!” He takes the chance to flick Harry’s nose, which makes him squeak in protest.

“Hey! Dad says it doesn’t have to be somebody’s birthday to give a gift, for example he brings mum gifts all the time just because he cares about her, and I have something for you because I care about you,” he explains animatedly, making Louis inhale on a sigh.

“You don’t have to give me things Harry. Besides, _I_ have something for you.”

“Really?”

“Of course. Happy belated birthday.”

Louis meekly hands him the packet that looks amateurishly wrapped even though Louis put in  all the care in world, all the care he hasn’t threw in anything for a long time now.

“What is this?”

“Open it,” urges Louis, champ at the bit.

Harry unwraps carefully the envelope to unveil the book he has picked for him, _Ticket to the Stars_ by Aksyonov, and the red wristband made of this soft terrycloth with the Manchester United logo. It was one of the cheapest things in one of the official stores, and the only one he could afford.

Harry keeps his stare on the stuff in his lap without saying anything.

“It’s not much,” mutters Louis demeaningly when the silence becomes too heavy.

“I love it,” chokes Harry, lifting his stare, looking at Louis with bright grateful eyes. “Is this your favourite book?”

“One of my favourites. I think you’ll really like it, it’s a very beautiful story.”

“I’m sure. Thank you so much Lou, you didn’t even have to get me anything.”

“I know. I wanted to.”

Harry smiles. “Now it’s your turn at unwrapping!”

He hands Louis a badly made wrap of newspaper sheets. Louis pulls out easily Harry’s walkman and looks at the owner of the object a bit confused.

“It’s for you. Look! My parents gave me a CD reader as a present so I want to give this to you because you said you really liked it and I don’t need two. It’s old but it works really well and my mum always tells me you don’t need to buy new stuff if the old one works just fine, at least that's what she told Bianca when she wanted to buy a new straightener for her hair, but hers is not broken! And I wouldn’t get rid of that but then they got me this as a present so it would be bad for me not to enjoy it because mum and dad were so happy to give it to me and you wanted one, you said, so I want you to have it!”

Harry speaks all in one breath, gesturing so frantically the stuff Louis got him almost falls from his lap. His cheeks pinken, and his curls are always windswept.

“Harry, I can’t take this, it’s yours,” tells him Louis once he’s done talking, taking on a reasonable tone of voice.

“But I already told you they gave me this one and I don’t need two! And you liked that one.”

Harry is so stubborn he’s going to take offence in Louis not accepting it, he’s sure. He’s pushing the music player Louis was trying to return back in his lap, and clutches Louis’ hand tightly around it.

“There,” he says satisfied. Louis glances back and forth from Harry to the precious object still not daring to consider the possibility that it’s actually his now.

“I—thank you. I don’t know what to say. Thank you so much,” he whispers incredulously, although it’s never going to be enough.

“We can go to Ed’s and he’s really good with the computer, so he can make you all the cassettes with the music you like! Also, look!”

He takes something out of his pocket and shows Louis a Blur album and his new CD player, flaming red.

“They gave me some CDs together with this and because I have asked my mum to put the Blur on the stereo so often because you always tell me about them they gave me also this one! Do you want to listen to it?”

Louis listens to him carefully, frowning a bit.

“You told your mum about me?”

“Yes, of course. Shouldn’t I have?”

Maybe. Wouldn’t his mum be worried of the friendships her son is making in the streets? She probably is. She is probably already thinking about forbidding Harry from seeing Louis ever again.

Louis cringes in sadness and anticipation, and he thinks he should enjoy these moments until they last.

“No. No, you should tell your mum everything.”

“I already do! Should we listen to this then?” he offers one of the earphones to Louis, gleeful as ever.

They disregard the bench in order to lay on the grass. Louis taps two fingers on the turf with the same rhythm of the drums and Harry looks at the sky, arms stretched out, brushing for one moment Louis’ cold hand.

“I need to give you back your mittens. I didn’t want to steal them, I promise.”

Louis turns his head slightly, blinking expectantly. “You can keep them if you want.”

Harry smiles, turning his eyes to the sky, which has never stopped being grey. The air is suddenly colder, and Louis can smell the rain coming.

“It’s going to rain,” he says casually.

“The smell of the air before it rains is the weirdest.” Harry sniffs around, making a funny face.

“There are surely weirder things,” Louis tells him.

“No,” laughs Harry happily, squinting his eyes and turning his face into a grimace as the first drops of that irritating thin rain that is there but it feels like it isn’t start to whirl with the wind.

“Yes,” says Louis pointedly. “Like you,” he turns a bit and tickles Harry’s sides, causing him to giggle unabashedly.

“Stop it!” he guffaws, making Louis laugh in reflex.

And here, with Harry, laying on the grass that will make his clothes even dirtier, listening to music and laughing until they run out of breath for the most stupid things, he thinks he’s never felt happier.

They decide to move, Louis helping Harry up, and walk a bit, climbing up the hill that overlooks the park and losing themselves in the sight of the industrial town in front of them. They walk for a long time, shoes dirty with mud and sand, little droplets of water sliding along Harry’s waterproof coat and slowly soaking Louis’ worn-out jacket. They talk and they talk, about all and everything that crosses their minds, and he listens to what Harry has to say as the boy does with him.

Louis likes Harry for this very reason, because he listens, he is the only one, he listens with care, with interest, even when Louis can’t talk about his worries, even when he needs time, Harry doesn’t lose patience, he’s wrapped around his finger and doesn’t urge him just because there is no time, there’s no time Louis to listen to you, to care about you, to unwrap what it is that you make up in your head, we are not on Earth with this purpose.

But Harry is, and as he listens his eyes become wider, and his breath catches a bit because he’s so focused, and Louis flushes a bit under the new attention and with that he thinks that maybe he can unleash to Harry more, give him more, tell him all the things, all his thoughts, all his preoccupations, because he will listen and he will care, because he’s small but he is pure and intelligent and he trusts him.

They climb down the hill and walk circles and secret paths and then follow along the edge of the little pond, until it’s time for Harry to go home.

“See you, Lou,” Harry giggles at his own rhyme and Louis actually can’t believe how precious he is.

“See you Harry.”

 

-

_Manchester, 15 th of March 1999_

Only they don’t.

The rent rises, and Louis doesn’t have a second to spare. He ponders for one night on what to do, after crying his heart out, and then he decides he’s going to make it. He writes shakily on some paper sheets and staples them on trees in some areas of the town and suddenly along washing dishes in the restaurant he walks dogs and he hasn’t got free time anymore.

He comes home tired to an empty fridge that Rebecca has raided after being assaulted by the typical hangover hunger and he hasn’t got the strength to get out and do the shopping, so he collapses in bed tiredly, starving, and thinking he hasn’t got any more tears in himself.

The pile of Julie’s letters in the garbage becomes ridiculous, and so does the amount of ignored calls.

He doesn’t even see Harry anymore, and that’s the worst pain.

He doesn’t play football, not even with the kids from the yard, and the thing is, he doesn’t think of them when he thinks about football, but of the park and Harry and his friends.

Or better said, of Harry, his friends and the park.

He misses Harry, his reassuring smile, his hugs, the serenity he drew from being in his presence alone.

He tells himself he’s going to visit them one of these days, when he’s less swamped with duties, but the weeks pass and he doesn’t feel like doing anything when he’s so crushed by all that he’s doing to survive and the knowledge he has only harder weeks ahead of him.

 

-

_Manchester, 30 th of June 1999_

 

Aleks bangs his door at eleven at night, but Louis is too tired to even get up and open it, to face his insistency and discuss about getting out and doing stuff, to listen to him say that it’s not healthy, it’s not sane for Louis to only work and bury himself at home once he’s done, that he should stop giving a shit about his irresponsible relatives when it’s crystal clear they don’t give a shit about him.

Aleks keeps yelling at him through the door almost every day, and Louis starts also to deliver pizzas at night, so he doesn’t always have to listen.

He is tired, both physically and mentally. Months pass, and nothing changes.

He goes to the park, once, and nobody is there. It’s just him and the suffocating warmth of three in the afternoon and the smoke from the chimney stacks far in the distance.

That’s the portrait he keeps of himself, alone, seen from afar, looking sadly at the horizon from the hill in the deserted park.

He answers Juls, once, when he needs some comfort, when he thinks something might change. But nothing does, and she just mopes and cries some more. She blabs something about trying to sell her paintings, she asks him for some money, and Louis is grateful he doesn’t have any, because he has never been able to be indifferent to her tears, he wouldn’t have the strength to tell her no.

At the same time, though, he doesn’t want to see her become just like Rebecca, abandoning herself to the knowledge that she doesn’t need to pick herself up, to work hard, when there is somebody else to care, to save her from the complete darkness.

Rebecca gives him a spark of hope when she finds a job in a call centre, but two days after they fire her with no mercy.

When she comes home and starts to break plates and mugs as Louis watches helpless and frankly annoyed from his bed, he thinks nobody can blame them.

He starts to ignore her, most of the time. He collapses on the bed each evening, and doesn’t read, doesn’t listen to music, doesn’t do anything.

And then sometimes, as he falls asleep, tears streaming down his cheeks, he just wishes he was uninvested, he just wishes he didn’t care.


	5. Made of Stone - Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A reunion and some literature.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! So sorry for the delay, but uni and moving and everything took a toll on me.  
> I originally planned to post in one go, but it got to an enormous lenght and so for the sake of the chapters' wordcount balance I decided to split this one into two. I write too much.  
> I would say that after the next chapter the story unfolds for good, and I hope to post it by a couple of days.  
> Huge thanks to my beta as always <3

_Manchester, 30 th of August, 1999_

Louis drags himself up the flights of stairs of his building, the eagerness with which he used to ebulliently jump the steps just a foreign memory.

The floor is sticky and dusty under his feet, the lobby dark and smelling sharply of cheap stew and something akin to mould.

His eyes are bleary from tiredness, his thoughts restless, his muscles so achy he almost doesn’t have control of his own body anymore, his mind utterly dizzy.

It’s already eight o’clock, and he hasn’t eaten since this morning. That plain roll he grabbed from yesterday’s basket of bread at the restaurant wasn’t even remotely enough to make him feel sated until the evening. With every step his stomach growls, and the feeling it’s starting to become satisfying; a masochistic pleasure Louis should probably begin to be worried about, weren’t he too busy thinking that the only thing he wants, even more than food, is to disappear under the comforter.

As he reaches for the door, however, it becomes evident how the universe must have a different plan set aside for him.

He feels his way along the landing with careful steps, tentatively, because the light is broken, and he stumbles on something that from the vexed and surprised grunt it emits, reveals it to be Aleks.

Specifically, Aleks crouched on the dirty floor, camped in front of Louis’ door since who knows when.

“Bloody finally,” mumbles the boy sleepily, mostly unfazed. “I’ve been waiting for hours for you to come back! I was this close to falling asleep,” Aleks stands up, patting his bum to get rid of the dust, voice drowsy and slow and not annoyed _yet_. Louis’ heart tightens at the words and at the sight, a flush crawling up his neck, something tugging in his chest. “I’ve been trying to talk to you for ages but you’re never here,” continues the boy a bit accusingly now, a bit soulfully.

Or maybe that’s just what Louis wants to perceive, since it looks like his contrition is particularly marked these days.

To confirm that, he feels himself wincing, his stomach churning. He knows where this is going in the end, and he knows he won’t like it one bit. That he will need energy he doesn’t have to face Aleks and whatever lecture he thinks he has the right to subject him to.

“I’m not doing this,” decides Louis, ignoring the boy’s words as skilful as he is at ignoring the pang of guilt, at ignoring his every qualm, turning the key and entering the flat, albeit leaving the door open for Aleks.

He gets to his room, discarding the jacket on the chair, sparing a hostile look to the stained floor he hasn’t got the time to clean, to an unfinished book on the bedside table, to the walkman Harry got him, now abandoned on the windowsill.

It’s laughable how it’s been _months,_ but as life goes on, Louis still manages to find something utterly fortuitous that will exasperatedly and systematically remind him of Harry.

He would be doing something, and then there would be a thought, a flashback that makes him stop dead on his tracks and take an impossibly long and resigned breath. It’s not only the most obvious things, it’s also the smallest, most insignificant ones, and that makes it all the more ridiculous.

A boy with a head full of curls gingerly passing by the window of the restaurant. A Billy Joel song on the radio. The dimple from a smile of a customer giving him a tip.

And then the most patent, the most painful, the sight of the stupid cassette player, so longed yet now so loathed, bearer of bittersweet memories, the only cassette he managed to buy (it was The Verve on sale) still inside, that he hasn’t got the fortitude to listen to.

The thing is, that the only nice memories he has had in months are from the afternoons spent in the park, and the ones he has lately are from reminiscing about those afternoons in the park. The thing is, that only thinking about putting the earphones on will make him want to talk to Harry, to walk alongside the pond with him and listen to what he did during the day, to go kick the ball around with Zayn and Liam until twilight.

Only he can’t afford to do that, doesn’t have the time, has more important issues at hand.

And it’s so fucking unfair, but that’s life for him.

It’s been months of the same shitty routine, and it’s been months that to Louis have felt just like a week of infinite and repeated days.

It’s been months that he’s felt like liveliness has been sucked out of him.

Time flies, when he’s so busy being worried, when an unbearable feeling of anxiety grips at the mouth of his stomach like an annoying constant.

It’s been months of talking to just a few people, of becoming a recluse, of only going out to work, and then to work some more.

At least he doesn’t spend much time at home to witness to Rebecca’s shenanigans, and that’s _something_. That’s the only positive aspect of the whole matter, actually, when the reality is that— it’s like he doesn’t have a life anymore. He comes home after work and wraps himself up something easy to eat, puts an old jumper on and crashes heavily on the bed, the weight of his day coming all together on his shoulders until he falls asleep for some drawling hour.

And then it’s time to start it all over again, without even having the time to think about it. Rewind, restart, the same disheartening day playing over and over.

“We are _so_ doing this,” frowns Aleks, the peeve evident in his voice when the darkness of the flat can conceal the one on his face. He flops on the bed next to where Louis is now laying, all crouched on himself and still dressed, knees to his chest and arms wrapped around them, tightly.

Louis doesn’t say anything, just stubbornly rolls over to face the wall, eliciting a deep sigh from Aleks.

There’s silence before he speaks. He lets some moments of uncertainty and pensiveness pass, almost as if he was looking through his mind for the best thing to say and ultimately couldn’t find it.

“I went out with Zoe, you know. Perkins. We got ice-cream,” he tells Louis all of a sudden, slightly sheepish, attempting casual and failing.

Louis blinks expectant turning on his back and staring at the ceiling. There’s a large stain of humidity right above his bed, a yellow halo where the paint is bubbling up, just to add to the decadence of the flat.

“I’m glad for you mate,” he says quietly, and doesn’t elaborate. His voice must sound a bit retorting, a bit sarcastic, but he can’t bring himself to care.

They don’t do this. He and Aleks. They don’t do confidences and advices and they don’t seek each other to talk just _because_. And he wouldn’t mind if it was like that, he truly wouldn’t. But he knows it’s not what Aleks came here to do, so he doesn’t even bother playing along.

“I like her, she’s really cute. Her sister Gabbie was asking about you around, did you know that?”

Louis hums.

“I think she’s interested,” he sounds even more uncertain this time. Louis can see him fidgeting on his spot, torturing the fingers of his left hand with his right ones. He’s not subtle, nor smooth, Aleks. Never has been.

Louis snorts, letting the silence dilate, just watching with clouded eyes the other boy squirm for a while.

“I don’t get why you aren’t saying anything,” says Aleks nervously, after it’s become clear that Louis isn’t going to indulge his attempts at small chat, after he can’t take the awkward air and Louis’ scrutinising eyes a second more.

Louis just shrugs, perfectly aware of how infuriating he’s behaving.

“I thought I would try by hook Louis, but you’re so— it’s like you aren’t you anymore,” continues the boy helplessly. He says it too easily, unaware of how much his words hurt and make Louis’ stomach drop. His piercing grimace fades, leaving space to a bitter expression, eyes becoming suddenly serious. _You aren’t you anymore._ Of all the things he could say, this one gets to Louis like a traitorous stab, like a splash of cold water.

“What, ‘cause I didn’t jump out of joy because a girl says she likes me?” he questions with venom, voice faltering and on the defensive.

Aleks looks at him cautiously, a bit confused. “Not talking of that. And you know it,” his frown deepens. “You’ve never really been interested in this stuff, anyway,” he says slowly, turning his stare on his hands that he forced to stay still on his lap. “You’re not you anymore because you don’t do anything of what you used to do. You can’t really say it’s normal that you’re going on like this? It’s ridiculous, you’re always out working and when you come here you’re like dead. You’re shut down and you turned snappish and it’s like you don’t care about anything anymore.”

Louis huffs out a small and sour chuckle. He doesn’t need a portrait of what his life has gotten to, thank you very much. He doesn’t need somebody else to judge, to criticise, to blame him, especially when they don’t know what it is like, when they think it all comes as a choice…

He cares about keeping himself alive. That should be enough.

“You didn’t have to do small talk then. Like you said, I knew you came here for a reason.” Louis straightens his posture, sliding on the bed so his back is leaning against the wall.

He likes this position, from where he can stare angrily at Aleks’ neck without having to be stared at in return, so he can be annoyed at him without having to look in his eyes and admit he’s right.

“Well, do you blame me? You haven’t been around in ages. You’re destroying yourself. You don’t live, you just go through the motions.”

Aleks doesn’t turn around to speak to him, and maybe it’s because he finds it easier like this, too. There must be a reason they’ve always gotten along so well after all.

“I’m just tired,” tries Louis slowly, quietly, not really convinced in the first place.

He tries to change his strategy, but he knows tired is a justification not strong enough. It’s an understatement, a pretext, a concept that he uses as shield to hide his real physical and mental status, to hide the outcome of the problems he can’t seem to get a grip on.

“You were here sometimes at least, then you just disappeared,” says Aleks in a whisper, voice growing smaller as he speaks, almost like he didn’t wish to be heard.

He’s never really spoken like this to Louis, so openly, with his heart on his sleeve. And even though he maybe doesn’t have the right, even though Louis doesn’t understand his insistence, when he talks like that Louis cannot just dismiss him.

“I don’t get how it affects you,” he mumbles then in genuine wonder more than in retort, making a close-lipped grimace and tapping two fingers on the wall behind him, creating a fast rhythm that makes the air in the room all the more nervous.

Aleks finally turns, to look incredulously at Louis straight in the eyes. Louis can see him lose composure, take on a frown that deepens with every word. “Well, it might seem impossible to you, but I’m worried.”

“But why. It’s not like I’m interfering with your life, you can still do all the stuff you used to do. It has nothing to do with you how I decide to spend my days.” He speaks with calm, trying to make him understand, but as he utters words Aleks’ features become sadder and sadder and— fuck.

 _Fuck_. At the sight of the other boy’s hurt and disappointed expression, Louis suddenly wishes he could take his stupid self-righteousness back.

“Wow, here was me thinking we were friends,” he’s not yelling, but he’s so harsh and accusing he might as well be.

Louis feels suffocating. His lungs expand with a dragged intake of air. He opens the mouth to reply and then he shuts it abruptly, sparing the other boy a glance.

In a book, a writer would likely describe Aleks as _tame_. Of a rough gentleness. Of a meek obduracy. Now though, his grey eyes, usually dull but settling, take on an unexpected irate glint. “I know you maybe don’t care much, but still. We used to do stuff together,” he bites.

“Well I’m _so sorry_ ,” singsongs Louis, not even half as debonair as he wished to be. “You can still do that stuff with the other lads though,” he prompts slowly, sagging against the wall after a silence gap opens between them. He clouds over, hands balled up in tense fists that contrast with the calm voice he’s struggling to maintain.

Aleks arches one eyebrow, sizing up Louis with a gaze that makes him squirm for how forthright it is. “They’re not…you know better than me how they are. They’re not bad as you make them, but you can’t really _talk_ with them most of the time. I— miss you,” he flushes, ending the sentence in diminuendo. “And anyway it’s not the same playing footie without you. I wouldn’t care much if I knew you were happy, if I knew you had other stuff to do that made you feel better,” he waves one hand in front of his face, frown even more evident. “But the fact is, I’m pretty sure you haven’t.”

Louis gapes at him, feeling his stomach sink, before he regains control of his reaction.

On instinct, he feels like hugging Aleks. He feels like thanking him for this display of affection, of loyalty he’s hardly ever found in someone and even more hardly deserved.

Once again, being the object of somebody’s worry, of somebody’s care, comes as a foreign sensation, and it’s never easy allowing his heart to become accustomed to it.

Aleks’ right.

He’s sadly, ridiculously right, and Louis can’t do anything about it.

He can’t melt under these words, he can’t accept and return them. He can’t cave to Aleks and let him convince him he can stop. He can’t drop all the jobs altogether and go play in the streets again, letting him know he dreads his life, his house, his family and every single one of his days.

He can’t, because Aleks makes it out to be so simple, when nothing is simple at all. When Louis is an adult in despair in the body of an almost fourteen-year-old.

And perhaps it’s not fair to Aleks, it’s only cruel, but he wouldn’t understand anyway, not when he doesn’t even make the effort to see what drives Louis.

And Louis’ always been firm he doesn’t owe explanations to anybody.

“Well there’s not much I can do, is it. I’m sorry but I have to do what I’m doing if I don’t want to die, or starve, or live under a bridge.” He tips up his chin fiercely, and his voice comes out as clipped. “It’s just how it is.”

Aleks’ face looks almost inflated with indignation, and he looks sharply at Louis. “Mate you need to cut with this bullshit. Who says you have to go and provide for yourself and for them? This is not normal at all! We—”

Louis flashes him a warning glare, nostrils flared, letting in a chopped intake of air, mouth pursed at this forwardness, at this aggressiveness.

“You know, none of us have it easy. But no one in this building has such a fucked up life. Even Billy with his father in jail has it better than you. Can’t you see how screwed it is? Can’t you see that your mother and your sister don’t give a shit and you keep lavishing for them anyway?”

The words cut right at the marrow of Louis’ bones, a nauseating pressure spiralling down his chest. “Shut up,” he admonishes, feeling like crying. How dares Aleks.

How fucking _dares_ he.

A lump of rage settles itself in Louis’ throat, making it hard to breathe. His heartbeat accelerates, he feels a sudden weight pressing against his lungs, against his ribs. What the hell. What does Aleks know. What does _anybody_ know.

He tries to speak, but his words die in a choke. “Don’t you dare—”

“But that’s how it is, isn’t it?” cuts him off Aleks, motioning furiously at him. “It’s fucking disgusting, that’s what it is! You need to call the social services, the fucking child welfare, whatever... you—”

“I won’t.” Louis tries to fight the overwhelming apoplexy of his feelings, the tears, and manages a tone that is inflexible, that doesn’t allow objections.

He won’t, he won’t call the bloody social services on himself. Who knows where he’d end up, in some shitty orphanage, in some hole forgotten by the governments of each and every country, in some family who thinks they can make it better for him, that they can buy him happiness, that they can love him unconditionally.

No, thank you very much. Better off as he is.

And what would they even do with Rebecca, then. With this woman who has lost every sense of her reason, who is clearly and utterly not in possession of her faculties.

He doesn’t respect her, but he has human decency, at least.

“Then I will have to do it for you. I’ll ask mum to do it,” says Aleks quietly, averting his stare to the floor, cheeks reddening. There’s embarrassment and resolution tucked under that redness. There’s defeat and there’s most certainly care.

Only Louis can’t see it, when his sight is overcome by anger, blood throbbing in his ears and in his temples and prickling in his fingertips.

“You fucking won’t. You won’t call anyone,” he utters out. He takes a step forward and launches himself at Aleks, finding for the first time the strength to get up from the bed, fisting the boy’s shirt and dragging him up to face him, locking eyes and gritting his teeth.

“It’s none of your business what I do and it’s not your call to make. Literally.”

Aleks seems deflated, incredibly small, and Louis quiets at seeing him so easily subdued. It only takes a brief look into the other boy’s incredulous eyes and he flops on the bed with a gasp, burying his head under the pillow, breath panting, each inhale tasting like foul and heaviness. He feels like all the strength has been drained out of his body, like there’s no emotion that’s worth being felt for more than a few seconds, be that anger, happiness, frustration or helplessness.

“Go already,” he mutters in the mattress with a plea. He only wants to be alone, only wants not to think. If he falls asleep, tired as he is, maybe he will manage that.

It’s easier this way, and he surely doesn’t need nor deserve one hardship more.

Aleks sighs, clenching the air, demeanour softening. He doesn’t move.

“Only if you promise you’re going to pick yourself up.”

Louis huffs out a choked breath that leaves an echoing feeling in his brain. “I’m serious. We’re done. Go.”

It takes a couple of seconds for Aleks to react. When he does, it’s after the umpteenth puff of desperate insistence. He reaches for Louis, lifts him by the shoulder and with energy he snatches the key hanging from his neck, lacerating the string that holds it with no mercy. Louis shifts slightly in surprise, massaging his nape and peeking from under the pillow to follow Aleks’ movements.

The boy heads to the main room and unlocks the cabinet, taking a vinyl— The Stone Roses, obviously— out. He puts it on then, making a satisfied noise that matches the first note of the song after discarding the cover on the floor.

Louis would usually get miffed, so irked at such disrespect towards his belongings, would yell at him to be careful, to put the album back in its place. _Usually._ He realises, instead, he doesn’t care much, doesn’t even have the will to behold enquiring what Aleks wants to achieve with this unreasoning gesture.

He hears his steps as the boy makes a return to the room, stops at the foot of his bed, snatches the pillow Louis was clinging at and throws it away almost violently.

Louis stands up abruptly and scared, music filling up his brain and dizzying his thoughts.

“What are you doing,” he asks, no more than a whisper, heart lurching. He stares up at the boy, not blinking.

“Listen. Yell. Sing at the top of your lungs. I don’t care. Dance. No, actually,” Aleks takes him by the wrists and makes him sit back down.

“Stop.” Louis collapses back onto the bed, rubbing a hand over his face, voice coming out feeble. The room feels suddenly too small, crumpling on itself and taking Louis with it.

“No. You need to go back to live. To do the things you enjoyed to do. You need to go back to play footie. I know you don’t like playing with us. You should go to the park, then. To those kids that you like better,” says Aleks frowning knowingly, but not sounding vindictive, crossing his arms on his chest.

Louis freezes, desperately out of words, heartbeat fastening in pace, every single word cutting through his heart like a blade. He feels unveiled, undressed, robbed of his most precious secrets.

“How— “

“Louis, I’m not that stupid,” deadpans Aleks. And Louis hunkers down even more, he shrinks in his little body of weedy boy, giving up every last bit of resilience, touching all his limbs that became numb, as to make sure they’re still there in place.

He feels himself melting into tears, for motives confused and unreasonable, for the life lesson Aleks is giving him, for that veiled reference to Harry that has him missing the boy more than ever, more than anything else, and how much should _that_ make him laugh.

Something quivers in his heart, in his intestines, everywhere. He sags further into the mattress, and what an unpleasant and miser spectacle must he be, to Aleks nonetheless, who’s offering his shoulders and his candour to him, even when Louis is being a dick on purpose, playing a part he’s not convincing at.

Aleks, who is still here, in the teeth of it all, steadfast and tenacious.

“Never thought you were,” sobs Louis, more softly, earnestly, openly.

Aleks breathes in slowly, lips parting, studying gaze never leaving Louis. Then he turns on his heels to go and lower the volume of the player, which like that becomes a sweet yet knowing melody Louis tries to regulate his breathing pattern on, but to no avail.

“You need to live your life Louis. Stop fucking killing yourself for them! You need to listen to your music, laugh, read your books. What were you reading before all of this?”

Louis cringes, whimpering in the pillow. Aleks ignores him and glances around in the incredibly messy room, spotting a book on a chair in the corner, half hidden by a bunch of dirty clothes. Louis has been re-wearing them for a couple of weeks now, because there’s no time to do the laundry.

“This,” Aleks takes the book and opens it to a chapter marked with a dog ear, a rarity for Louis, who always makes sure he has a bookmark he must have lost somewhere in the carelessness of the past months. The book must feel quite heavy in his hands, since Aleks looks at it frowning like it personally offended him. It’s Tolstoy and, admittedly, it looks quite like a brick.

“This what you were reading?”

“I don’t know,” Louis mumbles whimsically amid the sobs, feeling like a fussy child, a maddening trait he must have inherited from Rebecca, for sure.

It’s not.

That’s his new copy of _Anna Karenina_ he bought to replace the one he has lost somewhere, because it’s one of his favourite books and he brings his favourite books everywhere he goes. He likes to keep them around to read his favourite parts from time to time, and like that he must have forgotten it on a bench or at the restaurant.

“Fine. It is. There’s a mark. It must be.”

“I already read that,” snips Louis, before he can cut himself off.

Aleks pulls his lips together and flashes Louis a glance of exasperation and frustration that has a hint of amusement tucked into it. “Fine,” he sighs in a shrill as he challengingly goes to the shelf. He skims the titles and pulls out one random book. “This. Maybe you read it already but I’m sure you like it. It’s this author you always name. Dostoevsky,” his pronounce is funny. “We’ll start from here,” he informs Louis, flicking some pages that must be the preface and smoothing out the paper when he presumably finds the first chapter.

Louis looks dumbfounded as Aleks clears his throat and stares piercingly at him, before focusing his eyes on the book again.

 _“At length I returned from two weeks leave of absence to find that my patrons had arrived three days ago in Roulettenberg. I received from them a welcome quite different to that which I had expected. The General eyed me coldly, greeted me in rather haughty fashion, and dismissed me to pay my respects to his sister. It was clear that from somewhere money had been acquired._ ” He struggles on _Roulettenberg_ , his voice is rough and tentative, almost embarrassed, but resolute and very loud all the same. He lifts his glance to settle on Louis for a moment, before going back to the text. _“I thought I could even detect a certain shamefacedness in the General's glance. Maria Philipovna, too, seemed distraught, and conversed with me with an air of detachment,”_ he continues, and the pronunciation is a disaster, the intonation is all wrong and yet these words, read without the right amount of passion and pathos, warm Louis’ heart incredibly, make him feel all weird, throw him off-kilter. It’s like two worlds colliding, and it evokes the strangest feelings within him.

“Stop,” he pleads, but in vain.

 _“Nevertheless, she took the money which I handed to her, counted it, and listened to what I had to tell. To luncheon there were expected that day a Monsieur Mezentsov, a French lady, and an Englishman; for, whenever money was in hand, a banquet in Muscovite style was always given,_ ” continues Aleks unperturbed, pointedly, messing with the surname and careless of the commas. Louis can feel as the tears build up behind his eyes and something that was tugging in his chest gives, like a nautical knot when the boat is ready to sail.

“Stop,” he asks again, because he can’t look at this boy who is doing all of this for him, can’t listen to his meek voice as he reads words Louis has only ever heard in his mind when he silently read to himself, as he tries to make it better for Louis, while he only swims in his despair without seeing anything and anybody else.

Aleks looks up. After a split moment of just locking eyes with Louis, he decides to close the book with a dry _thud_.

He walks over to him, sits beside him and places a comforting hand on his shoulder, squeezing tightly. He then slowly takes something out of the back pocket of his trousers, and puts it on the bedside table.

Louis looks at the purplish note sitting out of place on the dark furniture, and then quizzically at Aleks, without understanding.

“It’s twenty pounds. I know it’s nothing, but I don’t have more. At least you can breathe for a bit. Take one day off from walking dogs, cleaning windows or whatever it is that you do whenever you’re not here or at the restaurant,” he smirks sadly. “Sleep some more. Go to the park. I can come with if you don’t want to go alone. Although I believe I don’t fit much in there.”

Louis shakes his head. What is this?

“I’m not— I don’t think I can accept this,” he manages to speak, but it’s low and affected.

“You can. You have to.”

Aleks drags him into an unprompted hug, that shocks a surprised huff out of Louis.

It’s a hug that doesn’t inflame him like Harry’s ones, doesn’t give him the balance he’s looking for like Harry’s ones. But it _is_ nice, it carries affection and brotherhood and awkwardness and roughness and comfort, and it doesn’t last more than a couple of seconds, before Aleks pulls back sheepishly, something flushing on his face.

“Think about it,” and Louis knows he’s talking about the social services. It’s all it takes to feel dejected again, to lift the lightness of the moment, all it takes for his expression to drop.

“I won’t do it,” he lets out in an exhale, just as weak as he feels.

Aleks nods comprehensively this time, standing up and finally heading for the door. “Take time for yourself at least? Promise me,” he says lastly, leaning on the doorframe, already so distant that Louis feels alone and wrapped in his own bubble again, the moment they’ve had already disappearing, the notes of the song fading.

“Yeah I— “ he sniffs. “I will.”

Somehow, he thinks. He will.

 

-

 

_Manchester, 15 th of September 1999_

 

Matilde’s voice resembles the one of an angel singing when she calls for Louis, who’s stuck in the same old corner of the kitchen where the wash tub is, scrubbing at dirty ceramic plates until they’re immaculate.

He found it disgusting at the beginning, but then he got used to it, forgetting about those movements that became automatic— rinse, scrub, scrip, rinse again and _then_ drain the water. Put them on the heated countertop, ready to be filled with delicious food of which he will only see the leftovers.

“Lou, can you come and wait table seven please? The restaurant is too crowded,” says the woman rushingly, quickly peeping out in the kitchen before going back to her customers.

His shoulder was already starting to hurt unbearably from the repetitive movement, sponge in hand. That’s the same shoulder he worn-out holding the lead when he walks dogs, the same shoulder that gives him problems since Rebecca pushed him and made him fall on it.

He happily dries off his hands on the apron, all stained and wet, that he then exchanges for the burgundy one the waiters usually wear, leaving the kitchen staff to deal with the dirty plates.

The lunchtime rush often comes as a blessing to Louis, because even if everybody goes crazy, at least he can stop for a bit with his monotonous and sometimes quite trying task and help out the waiters. 

He’s so, so exhausted. His eyes feel like he imagines a fish would feel in a bowl full of dry sand, and he poorly stifles a yawn. He likes working in the restaurant, but washing dishes is so tiresome when he’s just left for hours to hum to himself and stare at the same white tiles, while his mind wanders from the saddest to the happiest thoughts, to imaginary scenarios that will never happen.

He grabs a little block notes and a pen, puts on his best and most cordial smile and approaches the table number seven, where a young couple is seating, nibbling on some focaccia bread and staring intently at the menu. The smell of fresh bread and rosemary digs in Louis’ stomach a hole he tries to ignore, hoping the couple didn’t hear the loud grumble it provoked. When was the last time he ate, besides that coffee this morning? Sometime yesterday, probably.

“Hi, I’m Louis, I’ll be your waiter for today,” he says mnemonically. “Have you already decided what you’d like to order?”

Once again he holds back a yawn and tries to ignore the weakness in his knees, that feel like giving up.

The man doesn’t even glance at him, head buried behind the menu, the girl greets him with a shy smile and a nod of her head. He thinks he smiles back, but he is not sure. He feels quite dizzy and he’d do with some sleep right now.

It’s all his fault though, because he’s always out doing the most disparate activities, he walks miles every day, he washes hundreds of plates, and when he finally crashes on the bed he keeps tossing and turning, always making mental count on how much money is left, always counting how many hours of this or that job he must do as other people count sheep, and then he acts surprised when he feels unstable on legs that must be used to running but not to cycle their way around Manchester to deliver pizza.

The man clears his throat, snapping Louis out of his thoughts, staring at him expectantly… and as he stares back, a bit disoriented, he realises he hasn’t listened to one word of what he was saying, just looking at the man without really seeing him or the movements of his mouth.

“Uh…sorry?” he mutters embarrassedly. “Didn’t catch that.”

The man flashes him with a stern glare. He looks prattish, a bit. His hair is shaped into an artful quiff, his eyebrows are thin and perfectly plucked, he wears a black blazer and a brash tie. The woman looks at him in adoration. She’s nicer, though, even said hi to him. He probably doesn’t deserve her.

The man’s tone of voice is annoyed and displeased when he speaks, a bit nasal. “We would like to know what’s in the ribollita,” he says pointedly.

“Oh—err. Sure,” says Louis, getting his thoughts in order, tapping on the block notes with the pen. “It’s just a soup, really. With seasonal vegetables and beans.”

“Oh, no then. We’ll go with the lasagne. What about the cassata instead?”

The restaurant is swarmed and chaotic, customers and waiters alike go back and forth, like dancing a studied choreography, the typical music almost unhearable with the heavy chatter, cutlery clinking, some kid crying, the door constantly opening and closing, making the odious bell ring.

“Pardon?” His head spins, and he needs some effort to put the man into focus. He grips inconspicuously at the edge of the table, trying so hard not to tug at the tablecloth and make a mess of broken tableware pieces on the floor.

“The cassata,” the man huffs out, placing the menu down and looking at Louis as if he were the stupidest human being he’s ever had the misfortune to encounter.

Louis breaths in. Then out.

“That’s a dessert. With ricotta and marzipan. Delicious.”

“I see. I’ll just go with the main then, and a glass of red wine. She’ll have the risotto, and then we’ll see for the dessert.”

Louis nods and scribbles frantically, restraining himself from pointing out that he should have let the woman decide for herself since she has a mouth, a brain and probably a different taste. But it’s none of his business, that’s the first rule for simple humble waiters, and she doesn’t look less wonderingly at him, so whatever.

“So it’s the wine, the ribollita and the risotto,” recaps Louis. “And then you’ll order the dessert. Any starters?”

“I said the lasagne,” utters the man angrily. “Honestly is it just you or is everybody so incompetent in here?” his voice is louder, and catches the attention of the people at the surrounding tables.

Louis freezes, a flush climbing the back of his neck and reaching his cheek. Fuck.

“I’m sorry I— I’ll fix it.”

The man is about to comment with something that must mirror the scorn on his face, but he purses his lips as he looks just over Louis’ shoulder.

“Everything alright Louis?”

He feels Matilde’s authoritarian hand flat on his back, and he thinks that’s a shiver climbing up his spine. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“No,” intervenes the man quite vexed. “He’s fucking it up.”

Louis winces, humiliated, making himself smaller, and there’s surely carmine colouring his cheeks.

Matilde doesn’t scold him there though, she rather glares at the customer, squeezing Louis’ shoulder patronisingly. “I’m sure it’s nothing unsolvable. No need to be so harsh. I’ll send you another waiter. Lou, can you come with me?”

This is it. He looks at the ceiling, before making a grimace at the woman who looks at him seemingly sorry and following Matilde, who’s already in the entryway to the kitchen, away from curious and stranger ears.

“I’m so sorry,” he tells her.

“What’s happening Louis?”

“Nothing, just, I messed up a bit, but I’ve got this. I’m sorry I was a bit distracted.”

“I saw the scene. He was rude, you were absent. What is wrong?”

She frowns, and her dismayed tone seems the one of somebody who’s fell from the sky. It doesn’t matter this has been only one of the shit days in the dozens he’s had, it doesn’t matter how much he tries to tell himself he has close people he can count on. They don’t know what goes on in his life, how his hours go down, what it feels to be in his shoes.

And he realises it now, when it’s his fault, when he’s closed off like a hedgehog, when they maybe would like for him to tell, to seek for help.

But again, why would they even. Who would like to take on the weight of somebody else’s problems.

“Nothing, really.”

“You really think you can fool me?”

It’s the same thing Aleks told him. And maybe he thinks he’s fair when he seals the lid of his life jar, with no label to tell what he’s going through, and then still huffs when people ask him what’s wrong.

“Look, I’m just tired. I didn’t sleep much.”

“You think I haven’t noticed this has been going on for months? You’ve been so off lately. Why don’t you sleep?”

“I…” he fumbles for excuses. Insomnia. Neighbours making noises. The hot weather. Except it’s not hot at all. “I— don’t have the time.”

“And why’s that?”

Louis sighs.

“I go…uh. I walk dogs. In the morning. quite early.”

Matilde looks taken aback.

“And at night? You never finish later than eight, why don’t you go to sleep earlier?”

“I deliver pizzas.” he says, with a soul’s genuflection that implores not to ask more.

Vainly. The question that comes after is really not unexpected.

“But we don’t deliver?”

Louis swallows guiltily past the lump in his throat. “Yeah. I know. It’s a takeaway place I—am so sorry,” he blurts out dejected.

Matilde stares at him in scorn for what feel like centuries, and Louis takes it all, bending his head in shame.

“Go home.”

She’s sharp, dry. This can’t be. Is she firing him? She can’t fire him. This job is his only hope, his biggest source of remuneration, his... If he loses it, he’s done for.

“Matilde I’m sorry, I needed the money, I will give that up if it bothers you,” Louis pleads. “I need this job, I can’t survive if I lose it, I— ”

“Oh you will give that up for sure.” She sends a smile his way. “I’m paying you two more pounds per hour. You’ll do two hours more at lunch at the bar. God knows there’s never much to do, so you can as well bring a book with you. And that’s it. You’ll quit the dog sitter thing and stop delivering,” she explains to a much dazed Louis. “And now go. Home. To sleep.”

He’s speechless. Matilde doesn’t wait for him to collect his thoughts, because she takes the block notes from his hands and walks away, presumably to take the orders from the douchebag and his date.

“Before you leave ask the chef to wrap you something to eat and take it home,” she tells.

“I—“

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she cuts off. “Ten sharp.”

 

-

 

For the first time in weeks, he sleeps his fair share of eight canonical hours.

 

-

 

_Manchester, 18 th of September 1999_

 

 

Louis has to try four times before he finally manages to bump into Harry at the park.

Third time's the charm in his case is just a wishful saying, though he admittedly always went at preposterous hours, hours in which it was highly unlikely for a kid, albeit on holiday, to be playing outside.

It had been three in the afternoon, when the muggy, sultry weather of the end of summer had locked everybody inside, pampered by their expensive air-conditioned houses.

It had been around eight in the morning, when he took a forced detour while walking dogs and used all the poop bags he had carried with him, because he felt too guilty dirtying the cleanliness of that place.

It had been nine at night, when the sun starts to set in summer, and certainly either Harry had had enough of playing in the park, or he was called home by his mum, that it was time to have dinner, a bath and put the muddy clothes in the dirty laundry.

It is six in the afternoon now, the fourth time he tries, and it _has_ to be the one.

Louis has no excuses, with only one job to keep him busy and the rest of the day off, and so does Harry. He must be back to school, and this is exactly the time in the afternoon when you’re allowed to go out and play if you’ve finished your homework, witness the pitch invaded with kids, the busy sandbox, the shrill screams coming from the playground.

It all aligns, it all fits like pieces in a jigsaw, and Harry is in fact reading on his stone bench, doubled over a book, the focused eyes of somebody who gasps to know more.

And he looks like the start of autumn.

It makes Louis think that he didn’t get to know how Harry looks in the summer, if he still comes to the park, if he exchanges the warm jumpers for t-shirts with crazy patterns or rather sticks to the basic ones, if his mum forces him to wear a baseball cap that makes it really difficult to play football.

Signs of time passing show up on him, making Louis realise how many months actually went away without seeing each other.

It wouldn’t be that farfetched for Harry not to remember him, he thinks. Not for a boy full of life, with so many interests, so many fleeting and less fleeting things that must catch his attention every single day, things which enthral him and involve him and make him spend all his energies and fall asleep spent but content and enriched.

Hurt flashes across Louis’ face at the pre-emptive thought, throat tightening as he tries not to linger on the thought of approaching Harry and being met with a confused stare.

It’s hurt that comes unjustified, Louis is aware; Harry’s attention is something important, that he has to divide for people and activities that are truly worth it, and Louis, who’s not sure he fits in the category, can forgive him for his young mind of boy which must switch from thing to thing like a bee with the best, most redolent flowers.

Harry gives him the idea of somebody who easily earns everybody’s affection, always lively, honest, kind. Everybody must smile at him when he wanders around, with that jovial and gracious manner he has of going over things, and it’s impossible not to think of him like somebody better, who also makes Louis want to be better.

His hair is longer, his skin not less pale, not carrying any remnant of a summer tan. He’s got a light parka on, grey and black, blue jeans and some lace-up boots. He sits cross-legged, back curved slightly uncomfortably even for the sight, one hand propping up his head and mushing his cheek.

The football lies under the bench, uncared for.

He’s intent, all lightened up in the face, eyes carried away by what he’s reading, the hint of a lopsided smile tangible in the prominent dimple, and Louis can only admire his dedication, the way he enjoys things, even the smallest.

He’s so focused he doesn’t notice Louis staring at him with fondness first and then thinking screw it, he’s just going to go over to him and say something.

And he wants to be close to him always, because his presence makes him feel settled, makes him want to be a bit noble, too.

It’s different. What he feels. It just is.

“What are you doing here all alone? Let me guess, swimming class?”

His words let probably show through some nervousness, palpitation he can’t contain, as does his restless rubbing his shoes one over the other.

Harry looks up shaken off, and Louis can see the variation of feelings morphing his face, first startled, then breaking out into a smile, reflexive more than anything, then taking on a more contrived look.

He’s quick to discard the book that was taking all his concentration until a few seconds ago and run towards Louis, irremediably colliding into his body like iron collides with a magnet when it enters its domain.

“I thought I’d never see you again!” he cries out, and it’s angry, frantic, relieved, happy and desperate together.

He sobs and almost cries each word, and Louis hates himself, for neglecting him, for disappearing like that, for even doubting Harry would remember him. He can’t do much right now, out of words for all the whirl-winding thoughts in his head and trapped in Harry’s arms, overrun with the feeling of all of him, finally solid and _there_ , not just a happy, fading memory. So he hugs back with all he’s got, feeling himself unleash tears, too.

“I missed you,” he whispers in Harry’s hair, cherishing the feeling of being able to do this, to scratch his scalp and sense his arms fit seamlessly around his waist.

“I missed you so much Lou, I thought you’d never come back, I thought something had happened to you. I thought maybe I had done something wrong, I— ”

“Never,” shushes him Louis, cupping Harry’s face in his hands, stroking under his eyes with his thumbs to gather the salty tears that he doesn’t deserve. “It’s stupid, don’t cry for me,” he pleads, although they’re not really for him, the tears, they’re more from the situation, surely, more angry and needing release, more for how Louis showing up again put him in a state, and _that_ needs a good cry to go away.

“You’re not going to disappear again now?”

Harry parts and stands resolutely there, for Louis to take blame for his blotchy face, glistening eyes ever so confused, and distraught, and lost and full of questions he maybe wants to ask, but is too considerate and sensitive to.

“No.” Louis rocks on the balls of his feet, not knowing well what to do with himself. What do you do with your hands and your arms when you’re just standing there embarrassingly, self-consciously under somebody like Harry’s stare?

He decides to put them in his pockets and look down, to escape Harry’s too knowing green ponds of supplication.

“But you promised me, Louis, that we would have seen each other soon.”

“I know. But then I couldn’t.”

“Is everything ok?”

Harry doesn’t ask why, and that is the first important thing to Louis. He asks how he is, instead, and that warms his heart even more.

“Not really. But now it’s better than before.”

 _Because I’m here,_ it’s the natural completion of the answer he doesn’t voice. And the natural detachment that would come is nullified, by the nostalgy for what he hasn’t had in months. It mustn’t be enough, though, because Harry looks torn, his voice almost a whine. And Louis knows it’s legit, you can’t expect to sum up a prolonged absence with just a vague explanation.

“You’re not hurt?” asks Harry worried, always worried, a desperate quality to his unsettlement evident in the thin lines like sunburst around his eyes.

“No.”

Harry hums relieved, and that simple syllable seemingly was, this time, enough to reassure him. The sullen expression is quelled by two insignificant letters of the alphabet put near each other and he goes back in Louis’ arms.

They stay like that. It’s something new, when they embrace each other just for the sake of it, not in greeting, not in comfort, but to repair months of distance as if they could close it for good by staying as much pressed to each other as they can.

It’s a hug that feels different once again, that lasts longer, almost as if Harry needs to get all the Louis he manages, and Louis to steal the warmth Harry emanates, the smell of things that are nice he missed so much, the feeling of his hair, that got longer and even more swept and tousled, against his jaw.

“Can we talk?” asks Harry abruptly, the question has mordent to it.

Louis nods easily, rubbing at his cheeks to cancel the imposter traces of his vulnerability.

He’s not ashamed, see. He’s himself in front of Harry more than he’s ever been, he stops oscillating in search of a definition, an image of what he is he’s going to put out for people to take in.

Harry fits his hand in Louis’ and they start walking, leaving the ball and Harry’s stuff on the bench, taking automatically a small path that goes up the hill with a slow pace and in silence, Louis letting Harry mull over his thoughts and preparing himself to answer some reasonable but uncomfortable questions.

“What have you been doing?”

It’s clear the interrogative is not just a social convention. A conversation starter. A courtesy. Ipso facto, it surprises Louis.

Even before he stopped coming at the park, Harry hadn’t a clue of what he did during the day. That’s why he cannot know why he’s here back again today, of all days, and that’s why the question takes on an odd ring. For Louis it’s easy to imagine Harry’s life, made of school, of family time, of little arguments with his sister, of precious hours of playing with his friends. Then Harry only holds some snippets, random pieces of the whole puzzle that Louis is, this difficult puzzle like the ones with a thousand small pieces, and Louis needs to disclose more if he truly wants to allow Harry to start composing it.

“I worked at the restaurant. It’s an Italian restaurant.” He should say more, at the risk to get mixed up in useless details, instead he ends the answer there.

He saw right in Harry’s heart, and his is an attempt at figuring him out, not at conversation. He hums, playfully swinging their arms together.

“Is that the same job you were doing before?”

Louis will comply, this time. He studies Harry, and he can see in his eyes that acquired a bolder light now he finally realises he has the full permission to _ask_.

“Yes.” One of his walls tumbles down.

“And do you make pizza there? I love pizza.”

A small smile twitches at the corner of Louis’ mouth. “Uh yeah, we do. Well, _they_ do. I usually just wash the dishes.”

Harry makes a grimace at that and Louis flushes, feeling a bit ashamed of his job. He tries to sound nonchalant, to not forewarn a hostile or censorious reaction from Harry. “I hate doing the washing-up. Mum makes me and Gem do it sometimes. Do you like it?”

Louis relaxes. Another wall tumbles down. Of course. This is _Harry_.

“Eh, not really, but it’s alright. Not like, when I have to do it for many hours, but thanks to the walkman you gave me it’s better, so I can listen to music at least and time passes quickly.”

Harry looks happy at that, squeezing Louis’ hand and tugging him to turn left when they reach a fork.

“Will you come home once and we can make pizza and you can tell me all the secrets to make it?”

Louis’ chest tightens, but he won’t think about how he doesn’t fit in Harry’s world again, how their talking, their laughs are valid only in this little illusory world they have carved for themselves, where external contingencies don’t exist. He won’t.

“Uh— maybe? I got to make it once, actually, the chef showed me. I don’t have that many secrets though.” He cringes at how funny and untrue the statement actually is. He could cover the distance that separates Manchester from London putting in line all of his secrets, things he prefers keeping to himself, when he denies it, because he thinks he unveiled too much.

They keep walking, pacier as they start to climb the hill.

There are a girl and a boy playing the rope, far down on the path, and as soon as they spot them they start calling for Harry. Louis looks up at them, feeling like a blowtorch has punched a hole in the layer that protects their little bubble of a world made of things that are familiar to the both of them. That there are people, relationships, outside, and Louis is the debatable one. Harry doesn’t leave Louis’ hand, rather grips at it as if he was scared he would fly away like a balloon filled with helium. He waves smilingly at the two kids with his free one, politely. They pass them without stopping.

“They’re children from school,” he explains Louis, who mutters in understanding.

“So you know them?”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you go up to them?”

“What do you mean? I’m with you now,” he tells him.

Louis hums. They walk silently after that, Harry just happy looking around, Louis overwhelmed in thoughts. He might not look it, but his sensibility is frail, very, it makes him go all stiff in front of the first figurative friction, look everywhere for reassurement.

_Why didn’t you go to them. I’m with you now._

The words keep echoing in his head, making him second-guess everything they are. What an odd sight they must make, Harry all tidy and clearly rich and perfumed and then he, just Louis, no words needed, holding hands so innocently, a striking contraposition, an unlikely mix.

And yet, they keep looking for each other.

“Why did you come up to me that first day then?” it’s his turn to ask, out of the blue, because he does things impulsively. He’s not aggressive in his demands, but he makes a non orthodox use of the access he has to Harry’s openness, the opposite to what Harry’s demeanour towards him is.

“I didn’t come up to you. You must have a pretty selective memory Louis— “ Harry pauses frowning. “I don’t even know your surname,” he deadpans, looking very displeased, a pout taking place on his lips.

“Tomlinson,” suffices Louis. Harry makes a delighted sound and a third wall tumbles down. The fourth, the one with no window, with nasty signs on the paint, the one that closes off the room, that one will stay a bit longer.

“You must have a pretty selective memory, Louis _Tomlinson_. I literally kicked the ball at you.”

Louis smiles at recalling the scene. He was very vexed at the little boy, but it took so little time to revel of his presence. There’s still a lot, yet not so much of that boy all these months later.

“Yeah, but then you kept talking to me and stuff, didn’t you? And you told me you don’t really like much having to be with people. And anyway, where did you learn the word selective from?”

“Yeah. But it depends. And some books. I think.”

Of course.

“And why did you come up to talk to me and not to those kids?” Louis is persistent, exasperated. You can hear the exigent breathing behind his words, the fear that holds them together. It’s weak to ask for explanations, to want to make sure, to show how insecure he is, how untrusting.

“Because I wanted to? I wanted to make friends with you.”

“I thought—” he shakes his head as he smooths over his incredibly wrinkled t-shirt. His sentences struggle in getting free from abrupt pauses, they’re turned off. “Never mind.”

“What?” Harry looks at him disgruntled and sounds firm, determined, as to compensate to Louis’ uncertainty.

Louis flushes, but he might as well. “That right now, you— were ashamed of me. Like,” he swallows to fix the jarring voice, pressing two fists in his eye sockets. “Of talking to them. ‘Cause I’m here too.”

Harry takes on a worn out air, he doesn’t even attempt at one of his usual gestures of affection, hurt flashes across his face. “I was literally holding your hand. Why would I be ashamed of you?”

“‘Cause I’m not like—” Louis makes a vague movement with his hands.

“Because you’re not like us? Because you’re different and a boy like you doesn’t fit together with a boy like me? Honestly, Louis. I’m friends with you and I didn’t want to stop because I want to spend all the time with you because we haven’t in so long. Happy? Them, I can see them at school every day. And I don’t care much to talk to them anyway. I care about you, about listening to you because you are interesting, and about telling you things because you make me feel important. Is this so absurd?”

“I…” _a bit._ But it’s like that, with Harry. He gets answers he’d never expect, he asks questions, he gets answers to things he’s never asked, and then he gets questions he doesn’t know how to answer to. He sighs. “Okay. I’m sorry. I’m being stupid.”

“You are.”

“Maybe tell me next time, so I can stop.”

Harry laughs easily and Louis doesn’t have to fumble trying to restore the atmosphere. He offers Harry his hand, that the boy takes willingly, biting at his lips and squinting his eyes at the sun as he diverts them from Louis to look over at the top of the hill.

“If we hurry up we’ll manage to catch the sunset,” he says with a studied air, and after Louis nods they start to walk hastily, Harry setting the pace quicker but never once dragging Louis along, always waiting for him to keep up and holding his hand so tight it almost hurts.

They reach their spot where there are some bricks lined up so they make a quite comfortable seat and they’re just in time to catch the last fifteen minutes of the sun slowly disappearing behind the skyline, watching as the air turns magical around them and the sky lilac and orange. Harry tells him about his summer, about the most random things, about a frog he saved from some kids who trapped it and wanted to burn it in the campfire at the summer camp where he went with Liam and Zayn, all because their mums convinced Harry’s, though he really didn’t want to go, but he had fun in the end, and if he didn’t go the frog would have died, so he was happy just from that.

Louis laughs and wants to tell him he’s very special, instead he spies the changing of his expressions and tells him in change about Bruno and Matilde, about the unrealistic stories that the woman narrates from the romance novels she used to read when she was in her twenties and about the war narrations from the man, his vinyls and his poetry.

“We can go play if you want, you know. We don’t have to stay here,” tells him Harry at some point, and Louis can see straight through his attempt at exorcising his sorrow, at pleasing him, at turning his feelings into something happier. But Louis is happy on this hill, feeling the distance that grows heart rending between him and the real world. Going down would break that, would mean it’s almost time to go.

 “No, I—I want to talk some more. Tell me everything I don’t know from these months. You grew up so much!”

“Yeah, I’m almost as tall as Gems you know?” says Harry proudly.

“You’re almost as tall as me, too. You’re going to get me in a couple of months, I can tell.”

Harry smiles and looks pensive. “What else have _you_ been doing then?”

“I also started walking dogs.”

“This is nicer.”

“Not when they drag you for one mile because they’re chasing a squirrel though,” Louis smiles, playing with a pine cone of the many that fall from the trees that run along the paths of the park.

Harry giggles. “But they’re so cute! I have always wanted one. I would call him Nemecsek. Like from _the Paul Street Boys_ that you told me to read.”

“Oh, I like that. And what else did you read in these months?”

“Emma, that you also suggested to me. But it took me so long to finish it.”

“That’s quite a serious book. Did you like it though?” Louis puts the pine cone on top of Harry’s head, trying to balance it, and hiding behind the intention the pleased air that swarms his body at realising that Harry really _listens_ to him, that he holds the highest consideration for Louis’ thoughts.

Harry takes the role of keeping his head straight to balance the pine cone very seriously. “A lot. I like romance, even if I struggle with older books because of how they’re written sometimes. But I learn stuff! You know in school we did Pride and Prejudice, but I had already read it and it was easy!” he talks eagerly but he furrows his brow when from a sharp movement the pine cone falls to the ground.

He catches it, throws it to Louis, who restarts playing with it. “You must have done so well then,” he cannot help a smile at how genuinely enthusiast Harry is about his things.

“Yes, I got an A. And it was good because the day after I got a C in maths so mum wasn’t that angry with me because she was still a little bit happy for the English thing.”

“And what about your dad?”

“He was happy too, of course! He was away with the team so I remember telling him by the phone,” says Harry casually, pursing his lips and turning his eyes to the sky.

“With the team?”

“Yeah, he is a sports doctor, haven’t I told you? He works with the English national team so he’s away a lot because he follows them when they play. But he supports Manchester United like me, don’t worry. That’s where I got my passion from.”

Louis stops playing with the pine cone, throwing it down the hill, turning to focus on Harry to catch every piece of information he can give. “That must be very cool,” he comments, and his eyes are aglint. He cannot even start to imagine getting in contact with that glorious, glossy world made of football, of the greatest players, of beautiful stadiums.

“It is! He brought me to visit the stadium and the training ground in London and once when they played in Manchester he brought me with him, too. It’s really beautiful to see football from up close you know. We go to Old Trafford sometimes but it’s all different to see what happens behind. It makes it more real.”

Louis listens with his mouth agape to Harry explaining it all with enthusiasm, without ever bragging. “I bet it is,” he says incredulously, still not processing the fact that the other boy has had experiences, seen things, been to places he could only dream of.

“We should go to Old Trafford together and watch a match,” offers Harry, turning to stare intently at Louis.

“Yeah, maybe,” he says dismissively, not trying to imagine about any scenario that’s too farfetched to ever happen, too hopeful and amazing to become reality. “I’d really like that.”

“I’m sure if I tell dad he will bring us.”

“He loves you,” Louis blurts out, in between gritted teeth.

“Surely, he’s my dad! He’s not here much because he works a lot but I forgive him. And he tries to spend time with us even when he’s tired. Your dad doesn’t?”

Louis ponders on the question, or better, on the fact that he doesn’t manage to stay sealed with Harry like he does with everybody else.

“My dad…he left. Years ago.”

Harry gapes. He mouths around the air quite funnily a couple of times, like a fish outside the water, before he manages a feeble “...how?” and the voice is a rasp.

“I—he didn’t care. He said.”

“About his son?”

It sounds so bad. So linear, Harry’s question. Family is bound to love you, no matter what, to look after you. Well, _family_. Pete, on the contrary…

“He—” Louis stares in the empty, reasoning for a moment on how to say it, if he should say it. “He actually wasn’t my real dad, I found out. That same day. Just a man my mother was with. I don’t really know who my father is still. I don’t care much.”

Harry is the first person he tells it. Rebecca knew, of course, Julie has never needed to. Aleks doesn’t know, Bruno and Matilde don’t even suspect Pete left, they never will if Louis keeps not talking about his family.

Harry looks shocked and Louis now regrets a bit splurging all of this on him, so casually it became almost dull, but only because he’s used to it, he’s had years and months to process it and when he tells it, it doesn’t even seem like his life. He spent months telling himself he didn’t have a dad, it doesn’t hurt that much anymore, but Harry doesn’t know that, so the mere thought must look horrifying to him, and Louis is almost sorrier for Harry than he is for himself.

Harry looks like he wants to do fifty different things, say something, hug Louis, take him and escape with him, protect him from all the bad there is in this world. In the end he lets a tear run down his cheek and he asks in a small voice. “Why is all of this happening to you?”

“I don’t know,” Louis chuckles, mixing amused with bitter, with sad, with affectionate.

“Lou—” Harry seems in distress, torn.

“What is it love?”

“I—” he looks confused, biting his lower lip with his teeth. “I want to fix this for you. How can I?”

Louis’ heart breaks, his features softening. In all of this he also manages a pursed smile.

“You can’t, I’m afraid. But you’re doing so much for me, you’re so important to me.”

The statement falls into silence, made noisy by all the sounds that fill their ears. There’s the wind, and there are the birds singing happily, lucky them, there are the cars in the distance, and some cricket hidden in the grass.

Louis is thinking he would like to hide for a bit, too, when Harry stands up and falls on his knees behind Louis, hugging him from the back. The silence is not broken, but the air is filled with something, and Louis can only sigh. He wishes, like Harry maybe does, too, that these hugs could solve things. But after some moments they’re gone, and Louis only gets to recall the feeling, tucked into his memory for when he’s sad.

They decide to stand up listlessly when they realise they only have so little time of light and start making their way back, Louis challenging Harry for a short track and letting him win, although he stumbles and falls, making Louis worry until he stands up laughing with grass blades in his hair. Louis picks them and gives him a kiss on the head and laughs, too, but within him he decides he’s going to be more careful in the future, choose a flat ground instead of a hill to do an impromptu race, maybe, next time, if there is one.

They walk the rest of the way, and at some point Harry’s grip on his hand becomes tighter and he comes to a halt. Louis stops as well and looks around questioningly, after noticing a frown on Harry’s face

“What’s wrong?”

“I just remembered one thing. I was so happy to see you I forgot.”

Harry fumbles in his pockets and draws out a cassette. It’s a red cassette with a label on it that reads ‘LOUIS’ in a curvy and lopsided handwriting in block letters. He shows it to Louis before putting it in his hands.

“I haven’t seen you in so long,” he says, sadness charging in his voice at remembering. They already went through this, though, so Louis frowns.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“I carried this with me every day in the hope to give it to you but you never showed up, and then it was summer and I didn’t have a jacket anymore, with pockets big enough to contain it, so I started to carry a backpack, too. But you never came again, so I started to bring my homework here so that I could spend more time here in case you showed up. And you didn’t. And I kept the cassette and then it was jackets’ season again and the cassette would fit in the pocket again. And today you showed up and this is a cassette I made for you and I can finally give it to you. Ed made it actually, but with all the songs I told him to put in.”

“I..“ Harry. Harry made him a mixtape. With the songs he chose personally and had a cassette made, a cassette he will listen to with the walkman he also gave Louis. “Why?”

“I— ” Harry frowns. “I don’t know. Because I wanted to. Will you listen to it? But not now,” he says, stopping Louis with a touch on his forearm as he goes to take the walkman out of his own pocket. “Later. And then you’ll tell me if you like it.”

“Okay,” says Louis raspily, treasuring it in his own pocket. He would like to say so much more, but he also kinda doesn’t know what, floored, speechless, and his words usually need processing.

“We haven't even played. I’ve been practicing with Zayn and Liam, they say I’m better now. I do the things you told me, I want to show you. I know I’m still not really good but I like playing,” tells him Harry a bit sadly once they finally get back to the bench.

Louis looks longingly at the ball that is still there even if it was left unattended, but he knows they don’t have the time. The sun is almost completely disappearing, the moon translucent and surrounded by clouds already high up in the sky.

“Harry I have to go now, I need to wake up pretty early tomorrow. Maybe another day. I promise you I won’t disappear.”

Harry looks at him quite upset. He seems to be pondering on something, and then he speaks.

“You should keep the ball then, you know. Take it with you. So that you can always play even when you can’t come here. I can see that football is very important to you.”

Harry doesn’t know much about him. He knows now that his life is troubled, maybe more than he initially thought. That he’s not good with his mum, he doesn’t have a dad, his sister is away. This alone makes a quite disheartening picture. He knows he doesn't have a ball but hasn’t seen where he lives, hasn’t seen Rebecca at her worse, wasn’t there when Julie left and he cried his eyes out for the whole day, when Pete left, when he found out he wasn’t his dad, isn’t there when Louis has to buy just some rice because the money is never enough, when at the end of the month he goes to pay the bills on his own, when Rebecca gets fired from a new job, when she seeks for him to moan, to lament, to cry.

“No I don’t want that. I come here for you, I already told you.” He sees him here and that’s it.

“Yeah but if you take it then even if you can’t come you can play at least. I know you love playing, you are the best at football.”

“Yeah but it’s ok. So I have an excuse to always come.”

Harry looks like he is happy but he doesn’t want to show it, but Louis doesn’t mind, his smile is more beautiful if it’s for Louis. And maybe he, too, needs to give Harry something, to prove him.

“Listen,” Louis takes Harry’s book ( _Little Women_ ) and a blue pen from the bench and hands it all to the other boy. “If you want to talk to me call this number. Write,” Harry takes the book and the pen and writes on the inside of the cover, tongue poking out of his mouth as Louis dictates the numbers in succession.

“But if it’s not me who’s answering then hang the phone,” he says, sharply and admonitory.

“Ok.”

“You promise? I don’t want you to talk to—”

“Your mum? That you don’t call mum?”

Louis winces. “To her. Yeah— Rebecca. I don’t call her mum anymore.”

“Will you ever tell me about what’s really wrong?”

“Maybe one day.”

And as he says goodbye with one last hug, he believes more and more he actually will.


	6. Made of Stone - Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The other part of the chapter here, and it got as long as the first, I hate.  
> As always, thanks to Holly for beta-reading and being so helpful!
> 
> :)

_Manchester, 25 th of September 1999_

 

Harry doesn’t really waste time, making use of the telephone number after Louis doesn’t show up for three days straight.

Louis doesn’t waste time either, picking up at the second ring, rushing from his room where he’s making the bed, finally, changing the sheets, plumping up the pillows and everything.

There’s something extremely galvanic about Harry calling him on the phone that has the taste of a life that doesn’t belong to him, something that travels through the wire and spreads in his body, passing by the point of contact with his fingers where they clutch the receiver.

“Louis?” calls the boy, and he sounds already excited through the speaker, probably relieved he picked up. His voice cuddles Louis up, lets an unconscious smile take over his lips.

“Harry,” he breathes out, wedging the phone in between his shoulder and ear as he slumps to the floor, pinching his thighs with his fingers.

Yes it’s real, don’t be stupid, don’t be overexcited. This is new, is all. This is not him going to the park and casually bumping into the boys, despite all the hoping done along the road. This is his new friend calling him at home, seeking for him.

“I’m so happy you picked up. I am going over to Ed’s, do you want to come?” Harry sounds natural, like he has done this hundreds of times. He must know by heart the etiquette of calling somebody at home, to ask parents if pretty please they can put his friend on the phone, and then talk naturally, while Louis is there on the commercial rough tiles, red in the cheeks, ambling for words, quickly, so that Harry doesn’t think the line is disturbed or he hung up.

“Wait— now?”

“Yeah! There’s the Manchester United match, we’re going over to watch it,” explains Harry.

Be casual, don’t be too surprised. “I— and you want me to tag along?” Harry luckily can’t see the smile that gradually seizes his whole face.

“Yes. Zayn and Liam are coming as well.”

He was going to go out anyway, look for a pub where he could watch the match undisturbed, among other United supporters. But who is he kidding, this is so much better. This is a thousand times better.

“Are you really sure?”

Don’t look so eager. Harry wouldn’t mind, but _he_ does mind, coming off as begging for company.

“Of course! And we can also ask Ed if he can burn you some songs that you like on a cassette!”

Louis looks around from where he is sitting, the pile of dishes on the stove, the bag of rubbish next to the sink, all because he came home from work inexplicably happy and he felt like putting the earphones on and dance to the songs Harry picked for him for about half an hour, alone, like an idiot, jumping and singing his little heart out, even attempting at some impromptu twirl that almost made him break the blue vase on that shelf in the main room.

“I need a bit.”

“How much is a bit?”

Louis makes mental count. If he leaves now, forgets about the chores, just the time to grab a jacket and the keys and he runs as fast as he’s ever run…

“About thirty minutes.”

A noise from outside the door and the words of Harry’s reply blur confusedly in Louis’ head, the lift that had finally been repaired stopping to his floor, the keyhole accommodating a key, letting it turn, letting the lock open, letting someone inside.

Louis screeches internally, feeling his heart hammer, a vivace rhythm of drums, feeling his cheeks redden even though he has nothing to feel guilty for.

“There’s time. Can we meet in about thirty minutes at the park?”

Rebecca enters with the trailing stride of someone who’s struggling to keep firm on their feet. Louis freezes, looking up at her from where he’s sitting.

“What are you doing?” she wonders. In her hand, a messed about cigarette trembles, letting some ashes fall on the floor.

They exchange this interminable stare, one of theirs, one of those, one that wants to be something, that wants to have the power to be a mean of communication, but all it manages to convey is tension and extraneousness, because that person standing in front of Louis right now surely is all but related to him.

Not anymore, not in any way.

Surely, _surely_ there are no feelings there, no connection, no familiarity.

“What are you doing?” she asks again. Her voice is raspy, nasty, and as she utters the words she brings a hand to cover her mouth.

“Uh…” but Louis doesn’t need to struggle, she can’t take an answer, she gags once, twice, before running inside the bathroom, at least one presence of mind she still holds. 

“Lou? Is everything ok? Who was that?” Harry’s voice echoes metallic, he sounds dubting, a bit worried, in alert, and Louis almost forgot he was on the other end of the phone.

There are more indisputable gagging noises, then the flush, some stumbling on the cold tiles of the bathroom, clattering of glass, little vials crashing on the floor, and it’s a moment before the nauseating smell of stale perfumes and old lotions fills the air and added to the smell of alcohol and smoke starts to make Louis feel woozy.

“Is ev— what? Sorry, I— I blanked out,” he lies, he hurries loudly, to cover, hopefully, the noises coming from his mother emptying her stomach like it’s normal routine.

“I said, is it ok if we meet at the park in forty minutes?” repeats Harry suspicious, inquisitory.

“Ok. Yeah, we— “ Louis peeks at the bathroom door, leaning slightly forward with his body when he can’t hear Rebecca anymore. “I’ll see you there,” he cuts short, not waiting for Harry’s reply and hanging up hastily, bolting for the bathroom to check on her, preparing himself for the worst.

But the worst, as the sight that reveals itself for his eyes, is nothing new. It's just her, collapsed on the floor, staring in the empty as if it could give her answers, solutions, manna from the heaven, _whatever_.

Louis shakes his head, massages his temples, thinking about what’s to do now.

But whatever he _could_ do, all the movements that are instilled into him like in a programmed machine seem so little, so effortless, so useless. A stopgap until another go, just another waste of energies.

He might as well stop for good then, isn’t that right? He might as well see if for once she can lay for a bit in her misery and become as disgusted with herself that it’s the final push to stand up and get a fucking grip on her life.

Louis decides in the time to exhale in a breath, and he’s already precipitating to grab his stuff and head out, before he can think more and make out his pusillanimity, before Rebecca frees the bathroom and actually physically prevents him from going.

He runs lightly, and he tries to suppress that voice in his head that tells him he’s an irresponsible and selfish son. But fast runs have this amazing power to calm him down, to put a positive light inside of him, because he’s always focused on the destination, not on what he’s left behind, and he finds it beautiful, like when he plays football, and he’s focused only on the result at the end of the match, rather than on the score at the first half.

He’ll learn, Louis, that it’s a philosophy that can work in life, too.

When he arrives Harry is sitting all composed on their bench, hands resting on his thighs, swinging his legs.

“Did you actually run here?” he asks Louis once he slows down and reaches him panting, sitting to retrieve some breath. Harry seems cautious, itching to ask, only he doesn’t. His face says ‘I know there is something affecting you but I respect your boundaries’. Sort of.

“Yeah.” He doesn’t look at him, smudges with one shoe the ground beneath the bench.

“Do you need water? I have some in my backpack.” Harry doesn’t wait for an answer and already fumbles in his rucksack, offering the plastic bottle to Louis.

He takes two large sips, letting the liquid dilate the tightness of his throat from the run and not only.

Harry looks at him in await, probably still hoping he will get a reason for why Louis’ is acting so oddly, why he stays closed in this silence. “What are you thinking about?” he asks.

It would be easy to tell him. So easy. He doesn’t know when he began being able to use that adjective regarding his situation. Or maybe it’s not the situation, is that Harry is the person made to listen to him rambling about anything and everything, and like a little well he keeps all of Louis’ secrets safe, deep, and then Louis can just draw up the rope and with that a bucket full of comprehension and useful advices.

Only there are things that wound you in different ways, and that the only talking about them, giving them importance, has the power to reopen these wounds like a knife, and Louis is done, so done, prefers them to stay deep in the well.

There is not the occasional remark, the casual observation about something entirely playful to change the mood, to swerve the question.

“Nothing,” he settles on. Nothing new, after all. And that is true.

Louis feels strange, muscles hot from the run, head too light, and he lets this dreamy state from the tiredness and from his mother’s apparition take him over. He starts swinging his legs, too, and takes another swig of water, puffing out his cheeks and then spitting out. “Do you think Ed’s mum will be mad to have me there?” he asks Harry then, while he gives the water back. He looks at his shoes now covered in mud and worries, like always, about what they’re going to say, Ed’s parents, the neighbours.

A homeless, a tramp, that has already been yelled at him, sometimes, when he wandered with the lads from the block and they carried with them a contrail of stereotypes. He doesn’t care much, but that was a different situation that perhaps justified the judgement.

He doesn’t really have the power to make a good impression, he knows. He’s got the face, the ways, he can fascinate people with his words and his nature, but then he has that something about him that makes people wary, that says something got lost along the way. That there’s anger and there’s sadness in that skinny body, in those lovely eyes.

He waits for Harry to reassure him, to hug him and fix the lapel of his jackets turned inside out by the wind and the running, because that’s what he’s learned to expect from him. Instead Harry groans, rolling his eyes, and Louis can add annoyed under the list of qualities Harry’s eyes take on when he looks at him. He can add frustrated, he can add exasperated.

“Would you _stop,_ please.”

He’s not harsh, but for the first time he looks overly vexed, his tone determined and sharp.

No, it’s _nipping_.

Louis looks at him shocked and he can see a little shade glooming his face, a frown ruining the usual peace of his expression.

“It seems like this is the only thing you can think of. You are not less than anybody else here,” Harry says, like letting out a thought that had been harvesting for too long in his little head. “I don’t know what sort of complex you built into your mind, but you look just fine, if that’s what worries you. You are beautiful on the inside and the outside and there is not a single reason for somebody not to want you around. If they don’t they are very stupid and we don’t care about them,” he frowns sharply, taking Louis’ hand in his delicate one but making a point to arch his eyebrows to make sure the reprimand is still clear in the air. Harry has a face like Louis has never seen, feisty but determined, that has the power to become fierce, but remaining romantic, like one of a young boy set for great adventures in an old tale. “Maybe you are not rich or you don’t have expensive clothes and you lead a different life than most of the kids here, but who cares? It’s not demeaning, _you_ are the brave one if anything. You don’t have to feel inadequate, to belittle yourself,” a sad light swims in his eyes, making Louis aware of the sincerity that sits heavy his words. It’s really hard to change his perception of things, yet Harry has the gift to instill little beads of doubt, new perspectives, tiny rays of hope in his head. He gained, in so little time, sweetly yet violently overwhelmingly, an incredible influence over Louis. “You are so much better than any of the people you’re thinking you’re less than. You’re virtuous and enchanting. You have so many good qualities and the humps you have in your life don’t define you at all,” he finishes, tugging at Louis’ fingers.

The words dance in Louis’ head like syrupy melody, Harry speaking as if he were playing a piano, or maybe a violin, dedicating a song to him. He thinks he gapes for a handful of seconds before he manages to put some words together. “The... humps?” he asks, dumbfounded, eyes admittedly welling up. But there are not tears behind, just a burn, and his cheekbones hurt for how high up they are in the grimace taking over his face.

“Yeah, like the ones on the road that make you slow down,” explains Harry seriously. Louis can’t help grinning fondly and blushing at the same time, wondering how long Harry had been saving this metaphor for. “Fact is; I don’t like that you think you’re not wanted here or that you feel uncomfortable. Obviously your feelings are valid, but i just want to let you know they’re not backed up by consistency.”

Despite the seriousness of the topic Louis can’t avoid an amused smile, and he doesn’t tell Harry, but he trusts him, he wants to believe in his words, also because insecurity consumes the man to the last bit, and Louis doesn’t want to let yet something else consume him.

“You sound so wise. Cleverpants.”

“Don’t turn it into a joke, please. _Louis._ ” The way he says Louis’ name is mirror of how he talks and how he acts, almost otherworldly, contemplative, reverent, bold. Too bold. No other twelve year old could be like that. In Harry there is lightness, irony, candor but authenticity, and it all suits him, but Louis will never not be surprised about it.

“Fine. But you can’t deny even Zayn and Liam were wary at the beginning. There _is_ some consistency after all.”

There’s more than some, Harry, he wants to say. There’s plenty of odd looks in the streets and months of loneliness, holes in his jeans and in the walls of his building.

“Yeah but they warmed up didn’t they? They were just protective of me, I think. Sometimes they exaggerate.”

Louis hums, lost in thought. He doesn’t resent them, not anymore, not since he has had the privilege to discover Harry, to find himself becoming an important person in his life. “I can’t blame them.”

Harry smiles sheepishly and Louis’ eye, clever, reveals what Harry keeps for himself; delight in people caring about him, taking him into consideration, always, surprise in receiving love that he cherishes, Louis can see, like the biggest gift.

“But Ed looked quite scared last time, I think they traumatised him?” points out Louis, rather than commenting on those red cheeks. “What if he told his mum and— “

“Are you scared of Ed’s mum?”

The question falls flat, and Louis winces a bit. It doesn’t exactly trigger a bad reaction, no. Harry’s just joking about it, maybe he didn’t realise. It’s just that he always expects Harry to be the most tactful, and this was an odd slip. Or maybe he actually wanted to push him, to make him talk about Rebecca and what was happening while they were on the phone, to get a reaction out of him, finally.

But no, Harry wouldn’t be that sneaky, that caustic. Louis’ certain.

“Well I— I’m just saying we could have met at the park. I could have made a list of songs and given it to him.”

“I know the park feels like your safe place, but we could do so many other things together besides playing football. Trust me?” Harry makes it seem simple, making him believe that life can change so easily and acquire new, free shapes and modalities. “And besides, Ed is— he doesn’t come out that willingly,” he hesitates in putting that out, and there is a tinge of sadness to his words, too.

“Oh.”

“He prefers staying inside and playing videogames or like— he has all these technological things he likes to mount and unmount and study and stuff.”

“I see,” comments Louis, taken aback.

“But don’t comment on that. I think he has really bad anxiety,” worries Harry, looking torn. He must be regretting unleashing that detail to Louis, worried about coming off as shaming Ed, almost as if he needs to protect him, his tone defensive like he’s trying to justify his friend.

“And he doesn’t like people pointing it out because he feels at fault,” completes Louis, who knows the feeling exactly. He’s the same, after all, in regard to some things.

“Exactly,” Harry looks up, trains his gaze on Louis’ face, studies him somehow amazed, eyes glinting.

Louis diverts his stare, because looks of appreciation are nice to receive, but he’s yet to master the art of holding them without making a blushy mess of his face. “Don’t worry, I— well. We’ll go then. I want to say hi to him. And I’m not scared of his mum. I hope she at least won’t throw me out. I can do with people ignoring or mocking me, I’m used to it.”

“She won’t,” affirms Harry sure. “Ed’s mum is very kind and makes fantastic cookies.”

Louis nods, and as per usual offers Harry his hand, almost inviting him to run. They walk instead, so the moment lasts more, and also because Louis has already run enough for today.

“Feels nice,” he mumbles, and he’s becoming a bit better at putting out whatever is floating in his mind.

“What?” wonders Harry, always curious, always interested.

Louis wants to tell him the situation feels nice, autumn falling on earth, gentle, the air muffled, the slow walking, he easy chatting, Harry’s smiles, every time he tugs at Louis’ hand as to remind him of his presence even when they’re not talking, the leaves on the side of the pavement.

“Walking here,” he sums up, and Harry hums softly in agreement, hair falling on his forehead wildly. Louis thinks his curls look like balls of cotton.

Ed’s house is, much like Harry’s, big and really nice, the garden not as well looked after, filled with skinny bushes and naked trees. Harry opens with familiarity the gate that was only set ajar and urges Louis to get inside with an encouraging smile. It’s like he has the power to morph his face into the right expression Louis needs to feel good about a situation. When Louis feels sad, Harry offers his rosy cheeks and deep pond of green eyes, when Louis feels insecure, he has a sincere smile and comforting dimple carved in the right cheek.

Harry waits for Louis’ forehead to relax to ring the bell, and it only takes one minute for Ed to open. He’s dressed in sweatpants tucked into white tennis socks, a Reebok oversized jumper with a hood on, that lets only a few strands of damp ginger hair peek out.

“Harry!”

“Hey Ed,” says Harry with enthusiasm, hugging the boy lightly. “I’m with Louis.”

“Oh,” Ed says, uncertain, seemingly surprised but also clearly recalling the last instance they were together. He seems to trust Harry though, because he bumps his fist with Louis’ one, and that seems enough for now.

“Hi Ed, how are you?” dares Louis, hands safely back in his pockets like when he doesn’t know what to do with them, playing gingerly with the cord of his earphones tangled inside.

“Good. Come down, I was just in the basement,” he motions for them to follow him, down a staircase leading to a big and spacious room under the ground.

“How was the sea?” asks Harry casually as he grips at the railing to prevent himself from tumbling down. Louis stifles a snort, but Harry turns to stick his tongue out at him anyway.

“A nightmare,” is Ed’s hermetic answer, as he jumps off the last step before going straight to the computer set on a desk in a corner of the room, sitting on an ergonomic swivel chair lined in blue.

“Ed’s mum sends him each year to Dover for a week to breathe the _seaside air_ ,” explains Harry to Louis in a low voice, conspiratorially giggling. Ed groans from where he’s doubled over the keyboard, staring a bit too closely at the screen, the bluish light reflecting on his thick glasses.

The room is big and hosts two large sofas set perpendicularly, a big TV on a wooden unit, a pool table in the centre, some bean bags, a couple of guitars hanging on the wall, shelves filled with the most disparate books and even an encyclopaedia, one of those statement must haves in the world of well-off families.

Louis looks around amazed and fascinated as he self-consciously moves in the room full of so many desirable objects, following suit Harry, who instead goes straight to turn the TV on and look for the channel broadcasting Manchester United playing Southampton.

Not wanting to look around for as long as to be considered nosy, Louis gets close to Ed and his computer. After the initial greetings the boy didn’t feel the obligation to talk or entertain them, as if his only task was to show them the place where the television was and once he’d done that he could just go back to his things.

“So, what were you doing?” Louis asks in an attempt to make conversation, staring at the computer screen where there’s some kaleidoscopic light going on over a black background. Ed has earphones already on and doesn’t catch Louis’ question, so he has to tap him lightly on the shoulder.

“What?” Ed turns around, pulling off an in-ear, visibly miffed.

“I asked what you were doing?”

“Oh,” he utters unsurely. “Trying to mix some music. You want to listen?”

“Sure.”

Ed offers him the earphones, messing about with the mouse and some controllers until music fills Louis’ ears, a strange combination of rock and electronic sounds with a plethora of different effects.

“This is… really cool,” he tells Ed, bopping his head with the rhythm. It’s that genre that’s so in vogue now. Not really Louis cup of tea, but it’s a good job, he can see that much.

“Yeah I’m trying to learn,” he regulates some dials on the screen as he speaks, changing the reverb. Louis thinks. “I’m adjusting the panning,” Ed explains expertly, saving the changes to his project. Louis is very impressed.

“Harry said you could make cassettes, too.”

“Oh yeah I do have lots of music. I should have some spare cassette, I will make you one,” Ed says hurriedly, snatching the earphones and making Louis feel a bit bad, a bit uneasy about his comment that truly was more a remark on Ed’s abilities and an attempt at complimenting him rather than about getting a free cassette. He hopes that’s not what Ed thinks he came here for.

“Yeah— that would be great, thank you,” he says flushing, all of a sudden out of his element.

But Ed doesn’t appear any less enthusiast, opening a folder on the desktop and starting to show Louis all the songs, talking so quickly and pacey that Louis’ head is soon dizzy.

Harry wanders in the room, touching little objects, taking an ukulele that had been abandoned somewhere and playing some off key chords, giggling to himself.

Louis can’t avoid grinning, averting for a split moment his eyes from the screen on where Ed is eagerly explaining some technicality about computers he will never understand -this is the first time he sees a computer in real life, after all- and lock eyes with Harry, who just smiles at him and motions with his head and a fake scowl to go back to listen to the other boy.

It’s evident Ed’s very passionate about this stuff, that he’s good and eager when he’s in his comfort zone, losing himself in little details that take him minutes to unfold clearly for Louis to understand, brightening up every time Louis even so nods or hums in agreement. He’s in the middle of explaining how he completed a game of pirates getting to the last level when Liam and Zayn announce themselves.

“Your mum let us in,” says Liam explanatorily, while Zayn follows bearing a bowl with some crisps in it.

“Tell me we’re not late,” groans the dark haired boy, plopping down on the couch without a care in the world, legs wrapped in black denim going to elegantly fold over the coffee table.

“No, there are still some ads,” assures Harry from the floor, where he’s now fumbling with the volume of the television. The room resounds with the chants of the stadium.

Finally the focus is on the pitch where the teams are making their entrance, while Liam and Zayn make a dash for the bowl of crisps and Harry only giggles at them.

Louis addresses Ed, pointing at the sitting area. “The match is starting.”

“Oh. You go then,” nods Ed idly, not removing his stare from the screen of the computer.

“You’re not coming?”

“Nah, I’ll make the cassette for you,” he says stubbornly, putting one earphone back on.

“Oh but you can finish it in another moment, there’s no rush,” says Louis blushing guiltily. These posh boys. So nice and accommodating.

“No, don’t worry, I prefer doing it now. But you go.”

The other earphone is on as to conclude the argument. Louis sighs, but doesn’t push, taking a spot on the couch that faces the TV. Harry is soon beside him, scooting over and squeezing in between his legs and the arm of the sofa.

“Hope we smash them,” says Louis, taking on a more comfortable position and moulding himself to Harry’s body.

“I’ve got a good feeling,” hums Zayn around a crunchy mouthful of salt and vinegar crisps.

“Nah.”

“Liam, if you have to support Chelsea you can also leave,” retorts Zayn contrived, sputtering crumbles all over the outraged boy, definitely on purpose.

Harry chuckles and lies down, putting his head on Louis’ lap. Louis gets self-conscious for about a moment before starting to cradle his hair. The boy looks up happily, smiling.

“Don’t worry about Ed, I told you. It’s just the way he is,” he murmurs just for Louis to hear, probably noticing his still disgruntled face.

Louis wants to tell him that maybe it’s the way he is, but it doesn’t mean that they can’t try to help him, to make him feel more comfortable, that this is a normal situation where the four of them are sprawled on the giant sofas of Ed’s own house, animatedly supporting Manchester United, while the boy stays to himself, alienated. That it’s not only a matter of anxiety, that maybe Ed has lived instances where he didn’t feel like his passions were understood, and he had to learn to cultivate them anyway, to not care, to find refuge in them when he was bullied because of them or because of the way he is.

He’s just about to shrug the thought off when Ed’s mum comes down announced by a padding of slippers on the parqueted floor, bringing popcorn and cookies.

“Hi boys, you okay? I brought you snacks and orange juice,” she smiles, covering for a moment the view of the television as she crouches down to set the food on the coffee table.

“Thank you Marlene,” chorus the three boys, while Louis is a bit delayed with his muttered and embarrassed simple “thanks”.

“It’s ok, tell me if you like the cookies the same. I changed the recipe a bit, used the one your mum gave me Harry, with white chocolate chips,” she lowers her gaze on the smallest boy, and then moves it by reflex on Louis, drying off her hands on a tea towel hanging from her waist.

“Oh I love that one!” squeaks Harry, clapping his hands.

Louis holds his breath waiting for a comment, for her to point out he’s out of place, he doesn’t belong there, and the discomfort he feels is such that he ponders about dashing for the door. But she directs him a kind smile and then after taking in the picture the four of them make, turns to look at Ed with a pensive air and a quite sad frown. It would probably be imperceptible if Louis weren’t a truly great observer. She sighs and turns back to them, and none of the others notice anything, too focused as they are on the match.

“You enjoy the match then, and the cookies,” the woman says absent-mindedly, thoughts already somewhere else, leaving the room.

“Thank you,” they all mumble, around mouths full of cookies, but she doesn’t catch it.

Even when she closes the door behind herself, Louis is with his mind on her. His brain seems unable to avoid the comparison of him worrying for his mother with Marlene worrying for her son, becoming for a moment estranged from the comment on the match. He looks at the television without really focusing, and thinks, as a bite of cookie melts warm in his mouth, making him almost shiver, that when you look at somebody else you’re almost always looking at the frame, rather than at what is inside, at the canvas. You _think_ you’re looking at the paint, but you can’t really see it, because you’re not looking closer.

He thinks that is the wrongest thing you can do, and also thinks that he gets so indignant when they do it with him, crowning himself as guardian of tolerance and understanding, but then he looks at Ed, he looks at his comforts, at his family, and it’s easy to not contemplate the struggles he could be facing. And maybe Louis looks around in that moment, at Zayn and Liam discussing animatedly, at Liam’s Poyet jersey with a smirk, at Harry’s relaxed face on his thigh, and he thinks he feels safe and content in this room, on this couch, in the company of these people, and he thinks that maybe he has it bad, but this epiphany makes him consider himself a little less unlucky.

“God, Silvestre plays left-back. Hope he doesn’t suck,” comments Zayn, bringing him back to the match, leaving that little intra-discussion where it was, in a folder of his brain, to brood on in another moment. “Oh come on!” screams the boy frustrated when Yorke misses a goal by just a few centimetres, making them all wince in pain. They wince even more when only a few minutes after Southampton scores an admittedly quite beautiful goal.

“Oh no,” laments Harry sadly, while Liam tries his best to contain his enthusiasm, although he really can’t help the gloating.

Luckily after another handful of missed occasions and posts hit, Sheringham makes it 1-1, for the relief of everybody - except Liam, of course.

“What a player is Scholes,” says Zayn as they replay the action, picking some spare chocolate chips that escaped the cookies and ended up on the table.

“I love Beckham,” offers dreamily Harry, and Louis of course has to agree. The boy has taken on a lot of hate lately because George Best said he’s not a great heir for his number 7, but Louis thinks it’s not true, and eventually the rest of the United fans will realise it, will stop criticising and blaming him for every bad thing the team does.

Even Yorke delivers in the end, putting an end to Zayn’s mumbled cursing to his way. He delivers _twice_ , and makes the boy shut up, with many thanks from Louis, who hates when people criticise footballers without a concrete reason, playing the gaffer from a comfortable couch. It’s too easy like that.

“Yorke is a beast!” He screams excitedly when the footballer scores the second goal, making mental note to write a bit about this match in his little journal where he likes to pen little notes about heroes wearing jersey kits and anti-heroes playing instruments and all the things that inspire him and fascinate him, lists of songs, match results, footballers’ stats, men who made it, all safely shielded in the drinks cabinet.

Once it finishes, with the rather disappointing score of 3-3, the plate of cookies empty even of crumbles and the juice polished, they decide the day is too nice to waste it inside, so they collectively vote for some football in the garden, since it’s still daylight. They gather their things and start to head outside, but Ed doesn’t make a move, still on the PC, still anchored to his chair.

Louis frowns and lingers back, hesitant. “Wait, what about Ed?”

“He never comes,” points out Liam.

“And how can you be sure he doesn’t want to this time?”

“It’s fine Louis, he wants it like that,” intervenes Harry in a way to appease him, tugging him by the arm, urging him to follow them. “Let’s go play, come on.”

“But— wait,” if he doesn’t feel responsible he at least feels sympathetic, and his stubbornness makes him go to Ed, pluck the earphones out, be exasperant and maybe annoying.

“We’re going outside to kick a ball, do you want to come?”

“No I’m good thanks,” is the quite frankly prevident answer. Ed is pale, the sunkenness of his face accentuated by the light that radiates from the screen. He swings his leg on the chair and he looks tired, that bit evident in the wrinkles on his forehead and the purple under his eyes.

“What are you staying inside for?”

Ed looks tentative. “I have this Gameboy I found to the flea market when I went with Harry, I want to see if I can fix it and put Pokémon on it.”

Louis spots Harry peeking from the door, observing the exchange, and gives him a pointed look.

“Why don’t we— go in the garden and do it? It’s such a nice day. While they kick the ball and you can show me.”

Ed seems unsure, but all the same can’t avoid brightening, surprised. “You’re into video games?” he asks Louis delighted.

“I—Yeah. Sure. _Very_ ,” he attempts to pull a convincing face, scowling at Harry who casts a knowing amused smirk in his direction, covering his mouth with a hand to stifle down a giggle.

“It’s pretty boring,” warns him Ed, still slightly wry. “I mean, if you’re just standing there watching.”

“I’m sure it is interesting if you like it,” says Louis encouragingly. “I can even help a bit. Like, pass you the tools and all. Like a _surgeon_.” He hopes it sounds cool more than lame.

“Yeah ok,” Ed looks at him vaguely wary, but seems to have accepted Louis’ offer, for whatever reason. “You can bring the tools box outside then, I’ll take the game.”

They settle on the wooden table on the patio while Zayn Liam and Harry kick the ball.

Harry brightens in surprise when he sees them coming out of the house and looks fondly at Louis, who just bends his head feigning interest in the particular screw Ed is unscrewing, because he feels too affected and he doesn’t want anybody to spot his pink cheeks.

The afternoon winds quickly down to an end- surprisingly- and it’s soon time to go.

Louis feels relaxed, he got Ed to talk a lot, explain his every action and at one time he got so worked up talking about how he was going to create a new game, all red and agitated, Louis thought he was going to pass out.

It was good. It was one of the best days Louis’ had in ages.

Even the match bit, even though United only drew, the banter with Liam, he and Zayn teaming up to meddle with him while Harry just purred in his lap, chuckling lightly, getting Ed out of his shell, the garden, the football, the walk home now, pace a bit too quick to make it before the sun goes down.

It’s like a silent agreement when they loudly reach the corner of the road, still laughing and joking lightheartedly, that Liam and Zayn turn left, waving at them, leaving Louis to walk Harry home. He realises he doesn’t really mind, even though it lengthens his way back.

“You were really great with Ed, you know. He hadn’t come out with us in ages.” tells him Harry once the laughs are only an echo and the air goes to what it’s always when it’s only the two of them, earnest, heartfelt and intimate.

“I was just trying to involve him,” mumbles Louis embarrassedly.

“We always try but he doesn’t like coming out or playing or other stuff, he turns everything down,” Harry frowns. “I guess we just gave up.”

“I wasn’t trying to blame you, I’m sure you are all great with him, you still come and see him, I know you care. Maybe he just needed an external person, someone he isn’t used to, to push him out of his shell.”

“Yeah. it’s good that we have you now. It’s like you can read people.“

“I don’t—“ Louis flushes.

They’re at the address already, and Harry opens the gate that wasn’t locked. “You have so many qualities you don’t know about,” he says, hesitating on the step before entering. “But don’t worry, I will tell you and everybody about them. Promise.”

 

-

 

Harry’ll keep that one.

 

-

 

_Manchester, 20 th of October_

 

It doesn’t matter how many times Louis has told him it’s not ideal nor responsible, Harry keeps bringing his homework to the park.

They lay on a blanket (that Harry’s mum has given him so that they don’t get dirty and cold) splayed on the grass, and Harry spreads all his books and his notebooks and pens and pencils on it and works diligently, although it takes him probably double the time, because he’s also always talking to Louis.

Louis feels guilty, but at the same time he relishes surprised in the fact that Harry likes to spend all the time he can with him, and, most importantly, that Harry’s mum allows it, despite having never met Louis.

“I don’t care that we need to do a sacrifice to see each other, because it’s like we earn it and that makes it a better time,” says Harry every now and then, clearly pulling off the concept from the _Little Prince._ Louis never teases him about that, but he does point out that Harry is the only one making a sacrifice. At that Harry tells him he’s already doing so many sacrifices he doesn’t need more, and that he does it gladly anyway, because he likes to see him, and it’s all a vicious circle from there of a discussion Louis will, however, never be tired to initiate.

“I do like to see you too, you know. It’s one of my favourite things,” he tells Harry frowning, probably uselessly, because the other boy will win the argument this time, like he always does.

“Then it’s ok that you don’t have to sacrifice for one thing that you like, so it won’t have a bitter side to it.”

He says it with the resolution of someone who’s extensively thought about that, who’s explaining something that adds up perfectly, and Louis lets him have it, but purely because he loves the way Harry reasons and makes it his mission to always encourage him.

So, Harry brings his schoolwork to the park and Louis lays beside him, picking at blades of grass pensively, listening to music, watching the other boy’s focused expression and reading over his shoulder whenever he’s studying something interesting.

After a couple of pages, he asks timidly Louis if he can repeat the lesson to him. He gives him the book and starts talking, cheeks red and voice certain if it’s a subject he likes, tentative when it’s something he dreads and that never sticks in his memory.

Like science. Harry really dislikes science. Louis not so much, some parts are fine, he thinks, like physics and mechanics.

And like that, either subconsciously or sometimes actually putting effort into it, Louis studies, too, he learns new stuff, he gets engaged or fascinated, and he’s so grateful to the curly boy for doing this, suspecting at times it’s done on purpose.

“You sure it’s not annoying or boring?” asks him Harry after a particularly long chapter, and Louis never lies when he says that he enjoys it.

He gets to learn something new every day, both about school subjects and about Harry.

For example, Harry likes history and literature, and he hates maths the most. He’s also really good, methodical but naturally clever, and he has his own way of memorising things and then presenting them, never expectable but always clear and resourceful and brilliant.

“I hate this,” says Harry when he opens his maths textbook.

“It’s actually really interesting,” tells him Louis patiently, skimming mindlessly a story by Hemingway from a book he found in the ottoman at the flat and that he brought with him because it’s Wednesday, and on Wednesdays Harry does maths problems and he completely abstracts himself to focus on the calculations alone, and they don’t talk much.

But it’s ok, Louis likes even just laying beside the boy, flashing him a glance now and then, listening to his frustrated noises when the results he gets are different from the ones he should have gotten.

Harry pouts, erasing frantically part of an expression. “You would say that. I’d rather learn a whole Dante poem by heart than do this stuff.”

Louis tips his chin up, glancing at Harry’s scribbled notebook, that is so different from his other block notes, which are all neat and tidily written in a round handwriting.

“What went wrong?”

“If I only knew! The book says the result should be twelve, but I keep getting minus five!”

Louis chuckles, taking Harry’s pencil from his hands and scooting over on the blanket so he’s pressed to Harry’s side, getting a better view of the page of the notebook.

Harry leans into him, burying his face between Louis’ shoulder and neck and grumbling.

“I really hate this.” he groans.

Louis makes a popping sound with his lips and focuses on the operation, after scratching Harry’s head.

“Look, you added the numbers in the brackets instead of multiplying them to this,” he explains, using the rubber at the tip of the pencil to erase part of what Harry wrote. He writes down the correct development and uses a side of the sheet to do the calculations.

“There. Twelve.”

Harry looks at him in wonder, making Louis blush and return hastily to bury his face between the pages of the little book.

“Wow. I think you’re _magic_.”

“It’s really not that hard, Harry.”

“Yeah, well, _I_ couldn’t do that.”

Louis doesn’t argue more, but he tucks the memory, the words inside his mind, like a precious treasure.

He never initiates conversations, but Harry is always eager to talk, and it comes so easily between the two of them that more often than not they lose themselves in digressions that last the time it would take Harry to solve two complex maths’ problems.

“I feel like I’m distracting you,” moans Louis every time Harry gathers all his books when the sun sets and he still hasn’t finished studying.

Harry shakes his head in lieu of an answer. A small smile always tugs at the corner of his mouth. “It doesn’t matter Lou. I’d rather have you distract me than not see you at all.”

Louis sees the resolution on his face and he sees that not for any other reason it would cross Harry’s mind to blame him or to do it in another way. He feels a bit guilty with the notion that he works so much he only has a few hours free in the afternoon, but then he sees that it’s like Harry said, it comes naturally to him to make a sacrifice for a person he cares about, and sometimes wonder still strikes Louis when he realises that person it’s him.

 

_-_

 

 

_Manchester, 27 th of December 1999_

 

Louis enters the yard of their buildings complex and Aleks looks like nothing more than a small dot seen from there. He gets worked up and waves, calling Louis’ name, leaning from the window of his room where Louis spots him, when he opens the iron gate of the property and what with the sun scorching and blinding him he can only vaguely make him out gesturing something.

“Wait there Louis!” Aleks screams, and Louis doesn’t really understand what is going on so he waits, patient and confused at the distressed voice his friend couldn’t control.

His thoughts are obviously soon on Rebecca, on Julie, on what the hell they could have done this time.

It takes Aleks about thirty seconds to make the stairs and get down, and it must be his new record, in fact he’s all laboured and red in the face once he exits the door and he almost doesn’t breathe anymore for how difficult it got for him.

“Hey mate, it’s ok, breathe. What happened?” Louis puts a hand on the boy’s back and tries to keep calm, one because he’s made of stone, of ice, and it’s rare for something to gash him, even if he’s got a seaquake inside, a volcano, an inferno, and two because he learnt that preemptively worrying or despairing is a consuming and depleting activity, and he needs too much the energies he has to waste them in vain.

In lieu of an answer, Aleks points to a sign hanging to the wall of his building that recites “NO BALL GAMES IN THE COURTYARD”, written crookedly in blue pen on one of these brown paper sheets that the bakery at the end of the road uses to wrap the bread.

Louis moves his eyes back and forth from the sign to Aleks, quizzical.

The sign has just the flavour of stolen freedom, of uptight adults who have no mercy, who must have forgotten what it means to be a child, who prefer to have their old windows intact rather than listening to screams of happiness and nick a tiny joy from these kids who are already subjected as they are to so many injustices, who at least when they play they can pretend they are whoever they want, Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo or maybe even Beckham.

“The residents complained about the noises and the broken windows and we can’t play anymore and— ”

“Nice of them,” comments Louis, not quite understanding how could they all rather have their offspring take dangerous roads, ugly paths, make all the wrong decisions, meet bad people and lead a life that they, as parents, should rather forestall.

“I— Louis I tried to say something because I know you don’t like that but they— I didn’t go obviously, I told them I had to stay and babysit Ana— ”Aleks rambles, voice still panting. He sounds like a waterfall in flood, unable to stop, agitated and unintelligible, pale and pawing the ground, but also timorous, and Louis’ ears can only perk up.

“What the hell are you talking about? Who are they?”

Aleks swallows, pursing his lips for a second and retrieving some air in his lungs, enough to let out on an exhale: “the boys.”

Louis already knows he won’t like it, already is prepared to run, to have a brick thrown his way, a bomb. “They, like. Billy wanted to go to that park where you always go and— they went. There. Now.”

What the fuck.

Louis drops the bag with the groceries that he was carrying home and doesn’t worry about anything but running, fast, feeling Aleks soon hot on his heels after a moment of being taken aback by Louis’ bolting.

“Louis, wait,” he screams, but Louis is faster and need to use it to his advantage, needs to arrive there soon, to stop them, whatever it is they went there to accomplish.

He thinks of Liam and Zayn and he has to run, he thinks of Harry and he winces, and runs faster, and then he thinks of Ed and whether he picked today to finally go out and he thinks he needs to do something for good. Things have to change.

“I can’t,” he yells back, and Aleks will understand.

He’s never run like that, and when he catches a first sight of the neighbourhood as he turns the road he thinks his asthma is going to kill him like that, before he’s able to even get to the park, and what a beautiful death would that be, the little boy stroke down by a problematic breathing while he was trying to play the hero.

He runs more instead, the last two hundred, one hundred and fifty, thirty metres, and they’re right there, on the right side of the pitch, the one that goes alongside the road flowing right above. They made it easy finding them, and they are just five or six, surrounding three scared boys, or so Louis imagines them to be, because from his spot can only see Billy’s and the other lads’ nasty faces.

Logan gets closer to Liam, up-against, and the other two back off startled. Billy has his hands curled into two fists and puffs his chest, yelling something as he walks towards them. Louis doesn’t want to wait and find out what he’s trying to do, what the argument is about, he jumps the little scarp and can clearly hear the yells, Harry yelling louder, yelling something else when the whole group of boys follows Billy suit. He can see Zayn making an aborted move trying to protect the boy, useless when Billy pushes Harry to the ground easily, moving then to Zayn himself. But Louis cannot hold back a second more.

“Hey!” he screams to Billy, and he doesn’t even let him realise what is going on because he’s on him right away, pinning him to the ground, because Louis hates punching and getting into rows, but this is too much, this goes beyond every principle Louis believes in, because this is Billy hurting Harry, who now is behind Louis, and he doesn’t even know if he’s okay, if he got up, but regardless, Billy surely deserves a punch in the face, hard, two, and then three.

Only Louis doesn’t really punch, he’s not used, never has been. But Billy _is_ , and for every punch Louis gives he gets two, ten in return. Someone else gives him a kick in the ribs, because the bravery coming from anonymity never runs out, that one at least, and now is Louis the one with his back to the soil. 

“I knew that you were traitorous fucker!” Yells Billy as he hits with no pity. Louis can hear Harry scream his name, but he feels the blood in his mouth and can’t answer, reassure him, his sight white and blurry and the foul on his tongue.

“All this time…” mutters Billy as he hits “...fucking... coward!”

He punches like his life depends on it, Billy, and he’s got help now. It’s too many against one, one that gives up on the last glimmer of opposition and can only lay there, protect his head between his arms, so that the kicks hurt only physically, and take it, losing conscience as the pain is the only thing left to feel and focus on.

But with every other punch the feeling of reality dims a bit, like he’s passing out, and it’s an odd moment when Louis just wishes he would die, so that the hurt and the pain wouldn’t annihilate him like they are doing now.

He thinks he hears at some point a female voice, young but bold and very fierce. The kicks stop all of a sudden.

“Hey wankers! The police is coming!”

Billy hushes a _‘fuck_ ’ in his ear and his weight is suddenly gone from Louis’ body. There’s some commotion, feet scrambling to go, but he can’t see what is actually going on.

“Run, run,” he hears. “They’re coming,” he hears. “It’s not over Louis,” he’s sure he hears.

He spits out saliva mixed with blood and he really wants to get up, because he doesn’t want to be found here by the police for them to make strange assumptions.

Before he can even try, he feels a comforting hand on his side, massaging his hip and making the pain expand in his body. The hand is calming, but he feels like in outer space, fluctuating. He can hear Harry’s voice, broken with tears, asking if he’s good. At that he abruptly opens his eyes, getting attacked by the daylight.

“Can you stand up? I’m Laure, Harry’s mum,” Louis moans at that, an uttered noise escaping his throat, that still feels clogged . “Do you think you have something broken?”

Louis scrambles to his feet hastily, whimpering from the pain in his ribs, in his bones from the fall, in the face. Something wet is streaming down his cheeks, besides the tears, something hotter, and he feels the mud everywhere.

His legs pathetically give up after one millisecond and he finds himself on his knees, on the ground, panting.

This is it, the end, then.

He looks up and he sees Harry’s mum. She must be, she looks exactly like him, face kind and round, a dimple even if she’s not smiling, extremely pretty.

He looks over her shoulder. Zayn, Liam and a girl that looks like Harry, too, the one who must have called the police, glance back, worriedly.

“Are you ok?” asks the girl shyly, as she gets a bit closer and hugs from behind Harry, who makes a restless move to be closer to Louis.

Harry’s mum gets on his level, brushing the mud from his face and inspecting it closely. “Did they kick you in the face?” she asks, face contrived. Louis whimpers at the touch.

“I— Please, I know this looks bad but please don’t call the police. I won’t come here anymore, I will never show up again, never talk to your son again but please let me just go, I—“ he rattles off imploringly, moving his eyes from Harry’s mum, to the boys, to Harry.

“Lou what are you saying—“ Harry frees himself from Bianca’s hold, coming next to his mother.

“You must be Louis,” says Harry’s mum, cutting her son off. Louis only nods, sighs, sending a sad smile in Harry’s direction.

“Thank you.” She pulls him into an unexpected hug and of all things, Louis can only think he’s going to stain her immaculate white shirt with the state he’s in.

Yet she holds him more. Louis feels flabbergasted and she feels warm, much like Harry. But she also feels something Louis has never experienced, not even with Matilde or Ivanka. He doesn’t know how, but he instantly calms down at that something the hug perfuses in his body. He accepts Harry’s hand, too, that goes to encircle his, to squeeze, and he’s soon wrapped in a sandwich of mother and son.

“I saw that you defended Harry. And that you were reckless but very brave,” she murmurs in his ear like it’s nothing. “Harry talks about you at home, you seem like a nice, strong young boy. I’ve wanted to meet you for ages, but I never— but anyway. Are you ok? You're obviously not. Does it hurt? Do you want me to drive you to the hospital? And don’t worry, the police isn’t coming.”

Louis nods. “Not much. No hospital please,” He winces. “The police is not coming?” he lifts his head from Harry’s mother's shoulder to address Bianca.

Bianca looks at him, shaking her head. “I was coming here to call Harry and saw that and went to call mum. Didn’t really know what to do when I saw them punching you so I just yelled about the police while I went back, but it’s not true. Don’t worry,” she whispers.

Laure smiles at him, helping him stand up and putting a hand on his shoulder. “We’re going to clean this mess and put a bandage on the cuts,” she says, starting to guide him. Louis makes a stand, still trembling on his legs.

“I don’t want to be a bother. I’ll just go home.” There are tears still coming out of his eyes, even more so when Harry joins him, empathic as he is, hugging his waist and making him whimper for how much his body still hurts.

“You’ll come with us. And then we’ll all have a nice cup of tea,” is Laure’s firm answer. “Boys, you want to come or go home?” She asks then Liam and Zayn. “I’ll call your mums tonight and explain what happened. You’re not hurt aren’t you?”

Liam and Zayn shake their head. “Don’t worry Laure, we’ll get home just fine.”

They wave, Zayn giving a pat to Louis and Liam hugging him, or close, for what he can do when Harry is still stuck to him like an octopus and doesn’t look like he’s going to release anytime soon. “Thank you Lou for defending us,” he whispers, and Louis exhales out a nervous chortle.

“You sure you can walk?” asks Bianca as they exit the park and start to make it to Harry’s house. Louis wants to ask them to stop treating him like some sort of hero or survivor of war, but in the end he doesn’t have the nerve and only nods.

Harry’s house is so close to the park that Louis’ doesn’t even feel the walk, overwhelmed as he is. Even through the fogginess he can take in the magnificence of the inside, the perfect details, the adorned rooms furnished in a luxurious style, blatant but not braggart.

In the kitchen Laure puts the kettle on first thing, while Harry- who had to reluctantly let go of Louis- and Bianca fumble with the cabinets taking out four mugs and the teabags and the spoons.

“How much sugar Louis?” asks Bianca, so kindly it must for sure be a family trait. Harry still looks at him in silence, quite shocked, quite sad.

“No sugar, thank you.”

Laure brings him to the bathroom and makes him sit on the edge of the tub, which is giant and studded with soaps and candles and bubble baths and every sort of shower product. The floor is, like the tiles, of a pink marble veined in a dark green.

“There,” says Laure, as she finds the first aid kit in a cabinet.

She first dabs at his knee with a damp cloth before putting on the disinfectant on it, making sure the skin is clear and clean and bandaging the more evident scratches.

“You don’t have to do all of this Mrs. Styles,” sighs Louis, looking down at his lap because he’s too embarrassed and uncomfortable to meet Harry’s mum's eyes.

“Harry already told me you do show a certain reluctance in accepting nice things,” she comments, not interrupting her job.

He sighs, pulling away his hair from the forehead, where she puts a bandaid on a cut.

“Are there any other wounds beside these?”

“No, don’t think so. Just bruises.”

“Okay, good. Well, not good, but at least there’s nothing too serious.” She closes the box with the kit and then gives him an inhaler from a cupboard below the sink.

“I noticed you have asthma. Is that something recurrent? This is Bianca’s, it’s quite light but I think it’ll do.”

Louis finally looks up, finding her studying him. ”It’s just sometimes,” he says weakly, but accepts the puffer all the same. He puts it into his mouth after exhaling completely and breathes in twice, feeling better already. He gives the device back, but stays silent.

“Are you sure you’re okay Louis?”

“I— yes.” No.

“Those boys, will you— are you going to be okay with them? You seemed to know them, you’re not in danger, are you?”

“I will be fine.”

She gets down on her knees, on the rug in front of the bathtub. She takes Louis hands in hers, tilting her head so that Louis, who had bent his, is forced to look at her.

“I’m concerned Louis. I don’t want to be nosy or intrude, but I’m worried.”

Of course. Of course, she is a mum, she worries. Of course she is going to be concerned about Harry, about who are these people who come to attack the peace of their little neighbourhood and assault his boy, of course she wants reassurement, of course she needs to know.

“I’m sorry. I would have never expected this. I would have never exposed Harry to this, I care about him. I swear. He’s— ” he feels presumptuous talking like that, when it was his fault all of this happened. When Harry belongs to his family, when they know everything about him, when they have him for real, unlike him, who just has a few drawled hour in the park, the poor boy that comes here to claim that Harry is the nicest thing ever happened to him.

No, he can’t do that.

“I believe you. But I’m worried about you. You shouldn’t be exposed to this either.”

Louis could get a whiplash for how fast he tips his head up in surprise.

“I don’t— “ he hesitates, words mushing together. “I’ve been my whole life. I’m used to this.”

Laure arches her eyebrows, that look he gets when people feel the need do something and he thinks he shouldn’t have said anything, that she’s going to enquire to find out, she’s going to want to help, that they’re going to be sitting here for ages while she asks unsettling questions.

“You shouldn’t be.”

Louis shakes his head. “Please Mrs Styles, it’s— “ he doesn’t need this, not now. He’s too tired, dejected. Please, please, not now.

She nods curtly. “Your clothes are dirty. I’ll bring you some of Harry’s clothes and you can clean yourself in the meanwhile,” she offers him a clean soft towel, points him the shower in a corner. Louis sighs, relieved. He knows the conversation is only postponed.

“Thank you.”

“I’m glad Harry found a friend in you, you know.”

“Oh I don’t know— ”

“I do.”

He blushes. “At the beginning, I— I wanted to be friends, but I didn’t think it was fair to him because I’m— ”

“You’re a really good boy Louis,” like that, she cuts him off with a soft smile and goes away to supposedly fetch some clothes.

Louis stands up, opens the sink and splashes cold water on his face. He’s looking at himself in the mirror when Laure comes back, handing him a bundle of warm joggers and a t-shirt.

“Here, put these on.”

“Thank you.”

“You can come down for tea when you’re done. I might even let Harry and Bianca have some cake if you join them.” She still sounds soft when she closes the door behind herself.

Louis is left to stare at himself in the mirror, as he ignores the shower, gets rid of his jumper and starts to scrub at his arms and torso using the water from the sink. He wouldn’t feel comfortable in showering here, anyway.

He washes the mud off his neck, tugs his trousers down and turns to look at himself in the full-length mirror. He looks at the bruises on his thin torso, at the scratches on the face, at the mess on his ribs. He puts a hand in his hair and dries himself with the towel Laure gave him, that now has little dirty stains all over. He puts on the clean clothes, t-shirt a bit tight over the shoulders, joggers warm and smelling nice.

He looks at the towel, feeling a slight burn in his stomach. He folds it and then unfolds it back numerous times, before putting it cautiously on top of the laundry basket. He feels slight panic at seeing it among Harry’s family’s clothes, makes him feel even more of a stranger, makes him think of why, of all the places, he’s sitting on the edge of a bathtub in a giant polished bathroom, wearing clothes that aren’t his, smelling of a shower gel that isn’t his. Everything is foreign, and it’s a sour realisation, because how could he ever escape his misery if he doesn’t feel at ease in things that are better?

He’s panicking, when there’s a soft knock on the door.

“Yeah,” his voice comes out strangled. Laure peeks from the door, then enters the bathroom. She studies him for a brief moment, must notice something on his face. She offers her hand to him. “Come on,” she urges with a smile. Louis looks at her and takes the hand, jumping off the bathtub and following her trustingly.

Bianca and Harry sit silently at the kitchen counter when he and Laure get downstairs, two fuming mugs in front of them, two more on the opposite side. There’s an open jar of butter biscuits, a silver sugar dispenser in the middle of the counter, a tray with a chocolate cake, a good piece missing and waiting for Louis in front of the seat left free for him.

Louis looks around, and Harry nods encouragingly, prompting him to sit down. He takes the mug, warm in his hands, closes his eyes basking in the steam coming from it, closes his eyes so that maybe the situation feels less awkward.

“Where do you live Louis?” asks Bianca all of a sudden. Louis opens his eyes, stares at her. His heart beats too fast, even though he knows she’s just trying to make conversation, to make it easier for him.

It’s far away. It’s nothing like here. You room, Bianca, is probably bigger than my flat.

He hesitates, not ready for a look of commiseration, though he knows there’s nothing different he can expect.

“On the other end of the city. You take the tram, the number 48. Then you can change or pass the bridge. It’s on the bankside of the river Irk.”

He can take the judgement, he knows he has given a perfect frame of what kind of boy he is, of what kind of Manchester raised him, tough and alone.

Bianca hums but doesn’t say anything. Harry does the same. They’ve probably been told hundreds of times not to wander in that part of town.

“I used to bathe in the river Irk,” says Laure at some point, coming behind Louis and putting a protective hand on his shoulder. “When I was young. A bit impudent, I have to admit. Now probably nobody dares doing that.”

“If you bathed in there now you would probably be covered in oil,” laughs Bianca, and Harry and Laure laugh with her.

“Yeah, not the smartest idea,” smiles Louis, easing in the chair.

“There’s a nice bridge on the river and all these little huts on the bankside, I remember,” continues Laure somewhat pensively.

“They’re still there. Maybe they are a bit decayed, but I like them all the same,” explains Louis, so grateful to Laure.

“I spent so many days there, it was so beautiful, we would go there without our parents knowing,” she says, making Louis chuckle as he takes a small bite of biscuit.

“Wow mum, good example you give your progenie,” deadpans Bianca, arching one eyebrow pointedly.

Laure smiles. “Oh, but I’m under no illusion my progenie is much more responsible and clever than I ever was.”

Bianca rolls her eyes, while Louis and Harry giggle.

“It’s still beautiful,” Louis tells Laure timidly, looking at her in the eyes with purpose. Laure nods gently, and he thinks she understands. Louis has a mental picture of a piece of this town, _his_ piece, so misjudged and battered, the sloppy roads and cars that you can count on the fingers of one hand, the barren vegetation that is not outcome of a neat city planning, all still beautiful to him, despite the distressing memories from the flat, despite his mother living in there.

“We should go,” says Harry all of a sudden, looking imploringly at Louis. Louis looks at Laure in return, with an excusant expression. But she floors him.

“Okay. If you go with Louis.”

And like that, Louis sees Laure truly gets him. With a few words and a look, she understood that Louis is different, and she doesn’t care. That Louis knows how to avoid cars passing while he plays football in the streets, that he knows how to steal without being busted and he never does it, that he knows where you can find contraband cigarettes for a few pounds even though he has never smoked and that he knows how to get his way through life, and it’s for this reason that she trusts him. She understood, among a few other things, that Louis rolled with the punches without getting knocked out, that his education comes only from the good people he met in his life and from the words of his favourite writers.

“Of course,” says Harry excitedly. “You’ll show me all your favourite places. And then I’ll show you mine, like my room. When you’ve finished the tea. I’ve also got a subbuteo, have you ever played?”

“No, not really.”

“But I bet you’ll be so good!”

Harry is still so benevolent towards him, the ghost of the attack not lingering there. “Louis is the best at football,” explains Harry to Laure and Bianca. Somebody should probably let him know that the football ability has nothing to do with subbuteo, but okay.

“We know, you tell that all the time. You’re like his hero,” intervenes Bianca, directing a wink to Louis.

“Yeah, but it’s true!” Harry pouts, crossing his arms on his chest and fiddling on the stool to straighten his back against the seat.

“I just really like footie,” mumbles Louis modestly.

“He plays like a pro!”

“Let Louis tell us about that,” intervenes Laure pointedly, shushing her children, and Louis looks up in surprise, in questioning that already finds answer in a smile all teeth.

Yes Laure. Louis can tell you about that, can sip at the tea you made him, can revel in your already affectionate smile, which might hold pity but somehow doesn’t show it, which reveals comprehension instead, not intrusion, never intrusion. And for that you may earn instant trust, you can smile all you want, you’re even allowed a few grimaces of pursed lips and squinted eyes when you think he’s not looking, grimaces in worry, already in worry.

You can offer him cake he’s going to accept reluctantly, and when he has to go, yes, he’s really sure he has to, he’s going to take that hug, a bit egoistically, but not too much, when you even invited him to stay for dinner and he said no.

But the warmth of your arms, and the smell of freshly made cake in your hair, that he will accept, and it will keep him company for the whole walk home, and in the cold, in the wind, crossing roads and challenging the tram to keep fit, among the dashboard lights, passing the bridge, among the crickets singing at the moon, he will feel hot and fuzzy like at Christmas, and he will feel loved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to whoever left kudos, I'd love some feedback on this story!  
> Until next chapter :)


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